
Glass FlR6 

Book -R54 



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A-SADDLE 



IN THH V <</ £ 

WILD WES T Tr 



A GLIMPSE OF TRAVEL 

AMONG THE 

MOUNTAINS, LAVA BEDS, SAND DESERTS, ADOBE TOWNS, INDIAN 

RESERVATIONS, AND ANCIENT PUEBLOS OF SOUTHERN 

COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, AND ARIZONA. 



WILLIAM H. RIDEING, 

ATTACHED TO THE GEOGRAPHICAL SURVEYS AND EXPLORATIONS WEST 01 

THE ONE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN IN CHARGE OF LIEUTENANT 

GEORGE M. WHEELER DURING THE FIELD SEASONS 

OF 1875 AND 1876. 



LONDON 

J. C. NIMMO & BAIN 

14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND 



4? -a 



BALLANTYNE AND HANSON, EDIN3URGH 
CHANDOS 9TREET, LONDON 



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PEEFAOE. 



The geographical and geological surveys and 
explorations conducted with so much spirit by the 
expeditions under Lieutenant George M. Wheeler 
during the past eight or nine years, have shown 
that, however familiar the sections penetrated by 
the Pacific Railways and their branches are, vast 
tracts of country remain to absorb the attention 
of the geographer for many years to come. Each 
field season discovers some new area interesting 
on account of its zoology, its geology, its pic- 
turesqueness, or all those things^ combined ; and 
the value of the resultant contributions to science 
has been widely recognized. In the modest way 
of a newspaper correspondent, the writer shared 
the opportunities of the expedition in charge of 
Lieutenant Wheeler during two years, and trav- 
eled some four thousand miles a-saddle in New 



4 PREFACE. 

Mexico, Arizona, Southern Colorado, Nevada, and 
Eastern California. His contribution, offered in 
this volume, is devoted not to technicalities, but 
to the elucidation of the picturesque elements of 
the country traversed and the amusing features 
of rough camp life. 



■ 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 

A First Glimpse of the Rocky Mountains — The Frugality 
of an Explorer's Mess — Looking for Rattlesnakes — 
The Routine of a Day — A Fable about Prairie-Dogs — 
Travelers on the Colorado Highways — A Wind-Storm 
on Apache Creek — Over the Sangre del Cristo Pass . 9 

CHAPTER II. 

LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. * 

The Delusive Pleasures of a Camp Fire — Reminiscences of 
the Negro Cook — A Modern Nick of the Woods — Pe- 
culiarities of a Sage-Bush Desert — Our Arrival at Fort 
Garland — The Exigencies of Military Life on the Fron- 
tier — The Adventures of a German Recruit — Some 
Millionaires of the Future ,22 

CHAPTER III. 

THE MEXICANS OF THE SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 

Characteristics of Sierra Blanca and Baldy Peak — The 
Plazas of Conejos — A Polite Alcalde— Adobe Archi- 
tecture — An Unfavorable View of El Gringo — The 
Superstitious Rites of the Penitentes — A Modern 
Crucifixion — The Melodious Voices of the Senoritas . 35 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 

PAGE 

The Luxuriant Vegetation of the Conejos Canon — Sleep- 
ing under Ice in June — The Canon of Los Pifios— 
The Head Waters of the Rio Chama— The Sublimity 
of Night in the Mountains — Sam Abbey's Encounter 
with the Cinnamon Bear — The Coyotes' Serenade . 49 

CHAPTER V. 

MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 

A Difficult March — The Startling Features of a Mountain 
Marsh — Our Topographer's Deer — A Camp in Utter 
Solitude — Adventure as a Monomania — The Snow 
Flowers of an Alpine Lake — On the Top of Banded 
Peak — Two Hundred Miles at a Glance — Mr. Clark's 
Peril— Head First Down a Canon . . . .65 

CHAPTER VI. 

ISSUE DAY AT AN INDIAN AGENCY. 

The Trader's Store at Tierra Amarilla — A Gathering of 
Utes, Navajos, and Apaches — The Subordination of 
Women — The Beauty of the Young Squaws — How 
Arrows are Poisoned — The Tribulations of an Indian 
Agent 79 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 

A Prospect of Suffering — A Counterpart of the Yellow- 
stone — The Cities Wrought by Rain— On the Summit 
of the Continental Divide — The Rock Fantasies of the 
Canon Blanco — A Region without Water and without 
Vegetation — The Extinct Races of New Mexico and 
their Ruins— The Wonders of Pueblo Pintado . . 86 



CONTENTS. 7 

CHAPTER VIII. 

OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS TO FORT WINGATK. 

PAGE 

Out of the Desert into a Paradise — The Navajo Reserva- 
tion—The Amicability of the Tribe— An Old Chief's 
Idea of Whisky — The Giant's Armchair — Concerning 
several Interesting Members of the Camp — An Ad- 
venture at Albuquerque 101 

CHAPTER IX. 

A COUNTRY FOR COLONIZATION. 

A Geological Supper— What a Young Man might do in the 
Zufii Mountains — Sheep-Farming in New Mexico — A 
Narrow Escape from Drowning in a Mud Spring — 
Emigrants from Indiana — All Night in a Mexican 
Ranch 113 

CHAPTER X. 

A MODERN PUEBLO. 

Peeping into a Crater — The Wonders at the Bottom — 
Traveling over a Lava Bed — The Settlement of La- 
guna — The Dress and Personal Appearance of the 
Pueblo Indians — Madame Pueblo — Old Palestine Re- 
produced — A Pastoral Community — The Pharisaism 
of the Missionaries — The Chasm in the Plain — The 
Fertility of the Bottom Lands of the Rio Grande . 124 

CHAPTER XI. 

SANTA FE. 

The Capital of New Mexico — The Modesty of the Senoras 
— The Appearance of the Streets — A Very Mixed 
Population — The Attractions of a Baby Carriage — 
Croquet in the Mountains — Scenes around a Gambling 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Table— The Great Army Game of " Chuck-a-Luck "— 
A Mexican Ball 139 

CHAPTER XII. 

A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 

The Dangers of the Arroyas — An Unusual Telegraph Line 
— A Church Three Centuries Old — The Sanguinary 
Feuds of the Mexicans and Indians — An Attack of 
Mountain Fever — Sixty Miles for Medicine . . 147 

CHAPTER XIII. 

AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 

Primitive Agriculture — How the Writer " Fixed " the Con- 
ductor — Three Texan Stockmen on a Carouse — The 
Beauties of Fisher's Peak — The Expedition seen 
through the Smoke of a Cigar 156 



A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 



CHAPTER I. 

A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 

A First Glimpse of the Rocky Mountains — The Frugality of an 
Explorer's Mess — Looking for Rattlesnakes — The Routine 
of a Day — A Fable about Prairie-Dogs. — Travelers on the 
Colorado Highways — A Wind-Storm on Apache Creek — 
Over the Sangre del Cristo Pass. * 

Whether it is attended by expectations of 
pleasure or apprehensions of discomfort, the un- 
certainty which unfolds the future is often more 
disturbing than the least auspicious of actual 
experiences ; and when three years ago I left 
New York to join the Geographical Survey un- 
der Lieutenant George M. Wheeler, not a little 
uneasiness moderated my anticipations of the 
pleasure to be derived from the coming events. 
On the fourth day the Rocky Mountains became 
visible — a hazy succession of curves, accentuated 
by many peaks and streaked with the whitest 



10 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

of white snow, which seemed to be undergoing 
evaporation ; and on the fifth day, after a night 
in Denver, I entered the organizing camp on the 
outskirts of Pueblo, Southern Colorado. It was 
all strange and discomforting — a new experience 
of scenery and life to me. The rarefied air had 
parched and cracked my lips ; my skin and clothing 
had acquired the texture of sand-paper ; my eyes 
blinked in the brazen light. We had left the East 
in the soft, humid greenness of early May, and 
that seemed very distant and desirable now. The 
soil was loose to a depth of two or three inches, 
and a breath of wind was sufficient to whirl it 
into the upper space. The little grass and foliage 
visible were parched. In places the soil was split 
with thirsty veins as though it would open and 
fall apart, forming another of the frequent ver- 
tical-walled gullies which the wash of the rain had 
made. The superabundant sage-bushes spread 
their knotted and fibrous branches in every direc- 
tion, until the distance seemed to fade away in 
the pallor of their heavy leaves. The little town 
was shut in by mesas, which had the appearance 
of artificial embankments newly made. The Ar- 
kansas, flowing muddily and frothily, had forced an 
edge of verdure along its shores, and Pike's Peak 
and its neighbors in the west were gathering deep- 
ening purple and gold from the approaching blaze 
of sunset. 

In a grove of cottonwoods outside the town 



A GREENHORN IN CAMP. H 

the tents of the expedition were pitched in a hol- 
low square, and I entered camp with the melan- 
choly sense of isolation and strangeness which 
a boy might feel in first leaving home, or a trav- 
eler in alighting in a country the language and 
people of which were altogether unfamiliar to 
him. The experience was not only new, but alto- 
gether different from what I had anticipated. 
Speaking vernacularly, I was a "fresh"; literal- 
ly, wholly unversed in camp life. The expedition 
had. a military basis, but no uniform was visible 
among the men who were adjusting barometers, 
aneroids, thermometers, hygrometers, and theodo- 
lites, nor among those who were seated in their 
tents writing or furbishing rifles and filling cart- 
ridge shells. Whatever social or military distinc- 
tion some of the members of the camp possessed 
was hidden in a democratic simplicity of dress. 
A blue or gray flannel shirt, a pair of buckskin 
trousers, a soft felt hat, and a pistol-belt with a 
bowie knife ensheathed, made up the prevalent 
costume ; and this was modified in some instances 
by a straw hat or a pith helmet. I was shown 
to a tent which was to be mine. I had expected 
a spacious four-walled one, but this pointed out 
to me was three feet high, five feet long, and 
four feet wide — a piece of canvas supported by a . 
guy rope and two sticks. Silently and patiently I 
crawled in and changed my ordinary clothing for 
a handsome and elaborate shooting suit made for 



12 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

me by a New York tailor. As I emerged, this 
foppery seemed too obvious in contrast with the 
simple dress of the others, and I left the coat 
and vest behind ; but still I was not comfort- 
able. 

Three divisions of the survey, each composed 
of ten men, formed the camp, and at three corners 
of the hollow square the cooks were preparing the 
separate messes over wood-fires. An oil-cloth was 
spread on the ground, and small spaces were par- 
titioned off by tin cups and blackish knives and 
forks. The cook then placed several tin vessels, 
containing sugar, coffee, bacon, and hot bread, be- 
tween the other utensils. A wind was blowing, 
and the bacon and bread were covered with dust to 
the depth of a quarter of an inch before the men 
in buckskin had responded to the cook's tattoo 
beaten on one of his pans. They squatted or lay 
at three-quarters length opposite the plates, helped 
themselves to the bacon, and, after scraping the 
dust off, appeared to enjoy it. A bulky person, 
with a brusque manner and a particularly large 
appetite, rested on his elbows at one end of the 
cloth. While I was contemplating the barbarian 
informality of the meal a personal acquaintance 
approached me. "When will the officers' mess 
be served ? " I innocently asked. He could not 
conceal his smile. " Officers and men mess to- 
gether, my dear fellow — this is ours," he said, in- 
dicating the oil-cloth and the now incrusted ba- 



A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 13 

con. " Bless my soul ! I've neglected to intro- 
duce you ! " he added, and forthwith he presented 
me to the bulky gentleman, who was Lieutenant 
Marshall, the officer in general charge of the 
Colorado section of the expedition. I essayed 
eating a small piece of the bacon, but it was as 
unpalatable as sand-paper ; and then I climbed 
one of the surrounding hills to see the sun touch 
all the mountains with fire for a moment before 
leaving them dark and vivid against a steel-gray 



The first night spent in the open air by a per- 
son habituated to city life can not be very tranquil 
to him, especially if it is in a country where rattle- 
snakes and centipedes abound. It seemed as if a 
myriad of grasshoppers had taken possession of 
my bed, and it was with difficulty that I could 
be assured that they were not more deadly insects, 
as they crawled over me and alighted on my face. 
During the night the wind increased, and my tent 
collapsed over me. " Never mind ; lie as you are 
till morning," said my experienced acquaintance. 
Ah, how I envied the nonchalance with which he 
took everything ! And while I waited for morn- 
ing, the wind ceased and a heavy rain began to 
fall. That I lay in a mud-puddle amid soaked 
blankets at daybreak was a secondary consider- 
ation. My first thought was for rattlesnakes, and 
I took each boot with extreme care and shook it 
to expel any viper that might have selected it 



14 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

for refuge during the night. I also turned the 
blankets over in quest of similar enemies, and then 
dressed. The idea of dressing in a fine, compact, 
searching rain, with a chilling wind blowing at 
the same time ! " It's very imprudent," I said 
to the acquaintance before mentioned, who was a 
veteran surveyor. " It's quite uninjurious," he 
answered ; and as the cook's tattoo was heard he 
added, " Come to breakfast." There was the 
same oil-cloth on the ground, and the same bacon 
on the blackish tin plates. But I was more rec- 
onciled than at supper time, and in a few days I 
began to feel at home. 

In the course of a week the three divisions of 
the survey took the field, each being composed of 
an officer in charge, a topographer, an odometer 
recorder, a meteorologist, a geologist, a cook, and 
three packers. We separated from the two other 
parties, not expecting to meet them again until 
the end of the season, six months later, and then 
we entered on the campaign. 

One little episode repeated itself from day to 
day. It never missed ; it was inevitable. No 
matter where we happened to be, or what the 
weather was, a deep-throated voice was heard in 
camp before sunrise every morning, calling, " Five 
o'clock ! Turn out." The sleepers rolled over in 
their blankets, sighed and yawned, and longed to 
resign themselves to sleep again ; but the com- 
mand was imperative. Perhaps we had pitched 



A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 15 

our little tents on the slope of a canon ; the air 
was frosty, and puffs of gray clouds were drifting 
above the walls of rock and pines. The cook was 
already up, and was bending over his fire with a 
" sizzling " panful of bacon. " Now, boys, ten 
minutes past five ! " The weary ones rolled over 
and stretched themselves once more, and several 
pairs of legs were seen backing out of the tents. 
" Ugh ! How cold the morning is ! " " Did you 
hear the coyotes last night?" "Hear them? 
Confound them ! I couldn't close my eyes for 
them ! " Such questions were asked and an- 
swered with chattering teeth while the brown- 
faced fellows who had just turned out stood ir- 
resolutely near their tents. But it was only for a 
moment. There was a search for towels, sponges, 
and soap boxes. Under the brush at one side of 
the canon was a noisy brooklet of melted snow. 
Into this half a dozen heads were quickly dipped, 
and when they came out they were as fresh and 
bright as the blue sky that was revealed as the 
clouds drifted away. The big sponges became 
little cataracts, and the soap was used with a de- 
gree of lavishness that produced enough lather to 
obscure the little stream as it flowed swiftly by 
the camp. 

When the splashing was done breakfast was 
served. There was some very fat bacon, boiled 
rice, beans, and bread — no butter nor milk ; but 
these coarse things were consumed with as much 



16 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

relish as the choicest meats, and the platters were 
emptied and filled again and again. The officers 
of the expedition and the laborers sat side by side. 
All ceremonies were omitted. The eating was 
done quickly and heartily, and by half -past five 
o'clock the cook had " the table " cleared. Next 
the tents were pulled down and rolled up. The 
foundation of each man's bed was a strip of can- 
vas as broad and as long as the tent, and above 
this he had a rubber blanket, on which two or 
three pairs of woolen blankets were stretched ; 
not the softest or warmest kind of a couch, but, 
when the ground did not bristle with rocks, it 
was astonishing how soundly one could sleep 
upon it. By twenty minutes to six all the bed- 
ding had been rolled into marvelously compact 
bundles — each man, from the lieutenant to the 
cook, having done his own share of the work — 
and the packers had begun to load the mules. 
The reader probably understands that a party of 
ten men traveling in an uninhabited country on a 
scientific expedition must have considerable bag- 
gage with them even when everything superflu- 
ous is excluded. There were the instruments, the 
record books, and the provisions, of which we 
were often compelled to carry enough for thirty 
days at a time. He will also probably under- 
stand that, as our road sometimes lay up the sides 
of precipitous cliffs and down mountain trails, it 
was impossible for us to use wagons. We put 



A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 17 

our faith in a pack-train composed of mules, each 
carrying a separate load on a pack-saddle or ap- 
parajo. " Do you know how to pack a mule ? " 
some one once asked a small boy in Arizona. 
" You bet ! " he answered sweetly, with childish 
confidence. " Cinch him plenty tight, and then 
cry ' Bueno ' " — cinch meaning the girth and bueno 
meaning good. But packing a mule is not such 
an easy task, and to do it well requires all the 
skill of a man trained to the business. The ap- 
parajo is a sort of peaked saddle made of leather 
and stuffed with hay. It is firmly strapped on to 
the animal, which often shows decided objections 
to the strain by throwing itself several feet into 
the air and waving its legs with such velocity that 
the four seem to be four hundred. The nimblest 
gymnast that ever twisted himself into miracu- 
lous shapelessness could not excel the contortions of 
a wild mule. He — the mule — flings himself about 
with the resilience of an India-rubber ball ; ex- 
pands himself to the size of a small elephant, and 
the next moment compresses himself into half his 
natural proportions. No feat of agility is impos- 
sible to him. But the experienced packer looks 
upon his wildest tricks as at the antics of a mere 
baby, and leads him to the point of duty at a 
rope's end in a cool and daring way that subdues 
his angry passions in a moment. 

Before seven o'clock we were on the road, and 
our marches were usually about twenty miles a 
2 



18 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

day, although they occasionally covered between 
thirty and forty miles when it was necessary to 
force them for water. We went southward from 
Pueblo over the mountain by the Sangre del Cris- 
to Pass to Fort Garland. The first days were 
not pleasant to the greenhorn. The yellow dust 
was insufferable and insinuating ; we felt more 
than ever like sand-paper. A chain of dark pur- 
ple peaks broke the western horizon. Far behind 
and before us were desolate reaches of land, 
parched and fallow. The only signs of verdure 
were in the bunches of sparse grass, set about six 
inches apart, and the hoary cactus with its pretty 
yellow flowers. We did not see a tree in many 
miles, nor other shrub than the scrubby little 
sage-bushes, which are abundant enough. The ani- 
mal life of the region was also limited. No birds 
were audible ; a moccasin snake hid itself un- 
der a sage-bush, or a swift darted into its retreat, 
and a few prairie dogs barked at us in the squeaking 
treble of a talking doll. There is a tradition that 
the prairie dog, the owl, and the rattlesnake live 
peaceably together in one dwelling, but all plains- 
men deride the idea. The owl is sometimes 
found perched on a bush near the prairie dog's 
house, watching intently for the inmate to come 
out, and the rattlesnake also casts a longing 
eye on the same spot ; but neither the owl nor 
the rattlesnake is actuated by any desire to be so- 
ciable. The rattlesnake is of the opinion, as a 



A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 19 

plainsman said, that " prairie dog's mighty nice 
eatinV 

But there was traffic on the road, and the mo- 
notony was not so great as when, later in the sea- 
son, we followed an old trail or made a new one 
in a country that is not penetrated by white men 
once in a score of years. We occasionally passed 
a train of wagons with emigrants from Missouri, 
who were seeking new homes in the West. The 
cattle followed behind and the children ran on 
before, careless of heat, dust, and thirst. The 
sunburnt men strode along in great high boots, 
smoking and chatting, and the women sat in the 
wagons. At sundown they encamped near a pool 
or brook, and by sunrise next morning were 
on the road again, restless until the end of their 
long journey. Ascending a hill, we heard a re- 
port like that of a rifle, and when w6 attained 
the crest saw a Mexican bull team coming up the 
other slope, driven by dark-eyed, oval-faced 
Pueblo Indians, who execrated the animals in ex- 
ecrable Spanish. Their wagons were loaded with 
wool consigned to the East, and the report was 
produced by a dexterous swing of their long raw- 
hide whips. The most frequent wayfarers were 
the freighters, who hire themselves and their 
teams for the conveyance of merchandise from 
point to point, their journeys sometimes occupy- 
ing three or four months. At night the solitary 
freighter unharnesses his animals and pickets them 



20 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

out to graze, afterward cooking and eating his 
lonely supper. He goes to sleep with his hand on 
his revolver, and the least unusual sound awakens 
him and his dogs. 

At the end of the second day's march we en- 
camped by Apache Creek, near two deserted 
ranches from which the occupants had flown in 
sheer despair. When we arrived the evening 
was calm, cloudless, and without any indications 
of a storm ; but in less than ten minutes the 
mountains were seemingly enshrouded in a gray 
rainy vapor. As the packers were covering the 
boxes, the wind swept down upon us with the im- 
petuosity and force of a cyclone, increasing in 
violence every moment until our tents were all 
upset. This was not the worst. The gale car- 
ried not rain but dense clouds of dust with it, that 
filled our ears, mouth, and eyes ; dressing-cases, 
mess-chests, clothes-bags, and bedding. Lieuten- 
ant Morrison, of the Sixth Cavalry, our officer in 
charge, and Mr. Clark, the topographer, took pos- 
session of one of the deserted ranches, and vainly 
endeavored to fill a barometer tube with mercury. 
They worked patiently until after midnight, and 
then, after all their painstaking, a sudden gust of 
wind cracked and broke the slender glass. Mean- 
while we lay under our tents on a ridge of black 
sand, and felt superlatively disconsolate. 

From Apache Creek we went southward along 
the eastern foot-hills of the mountains to Badito. 



A GREENHORN IN CAMP. 21 

We passed the Huerfano, an isolated peak pro- 
jected above the green sea of the prairie, and 
thence traveled over the Sangre del Cristo. The 
Wet Mountains came into view, and the verdure 
became more abundant and more varied in shade. 
Tall pines cast their long shadows on the slopes, 
and moaned as the increasing wind stirred among 
their straight and dusky branches. Now and then 
an alpine bluebell nodded at us or a wild rose peeped 
out of a thicket. The valleys lay under a dense 
growth of shrubbery, as leafy and as lustrous as 
the arbor vitae. We toiled over the innumerable 
foothills — the lowest loftier than Mount Wash- 
ington — and far away could see the snowy spires 
and domes of the Sierra Blanca, and the smooth, 
precipitous gray walls of Baldy Peak. No sooner 
had we attained the crest of one hill than another 
still higher appeared, and our outlook expanded 
every minute. We followed the trail through a 
deep grove, and glanced down through a natural 
clearing in the pines and aspens on ninety miles 
of country, in which the distant mountains looked 
like islands in a wide ocean. The life limits were 
not far above, and the wind roared among the 
trees with the sound of a tremendous cataract. 
Whole forests of pines were prone on the slopes, 
torn from their beds by the previous winter's 
tempests. At last it seemed that we had reached 
the sky itself and were set in a zone of frosty 
azure. Our path was like an opening seam in the 



22 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

side of the mountain. We climbed over fallen 
logs and bowlders, and after a six hours' march 
stood upon the summit of the Sangre del Cristo. 

That night our tents were pitched in a canon 
to the southwest of the mountain. Gloomy for- 
ests of pine locked us in, and rugged masses of 
cloud drifted overhead. The cold was intense, 
although the day had been very hot, and the flap- 
ping of our tents reminded us of a boisterous 
night at sea. 



CHAPTER II. 

LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 

The Delusive Pleasures of a Camp Fire — Reminiscences of the 
Negro Cook — A Modern Nick of the Woods — Peculiarities 
of a Sage-Bush Desert — -Our Arrival at Fort Garland — The 
Exigencies of Military Life on the Frontier — The Adven- 
tures of a German Recruit — Some Millionaires of the 
Future. 

One of the many pleasures which inexperienced 
people insist upon attributing to out-door life is 
the camp fire. The greenhorn was fond of watch- 
ing the smoke winding upward awhile, and then 
losing itself in the illimitable — the flicker and 
glow on the men crowding near the blaze, that, 
with a sudden flashy lighted a single face for a 
moment and brought all the features into dis- 



LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 23 

tinctness, and then obliterated them with a shad- 
ow. But the picturesque and comfort are qual- 
ities that do not always go together ; and while 
the camp fire is all very well for those who are 
content with the prettiness of its tongues of flame 
and breath of sparks, it is practically a nuisance. 
It always reminded the greenhorn of how cold his 
back was. Those who were allured to it were 
(nearly) roasted to death on one side and (nearly) 
frozen to death on the other. The smoke was 
suffocating, the flame scorching, and the flying 
sparks raised serious blisters on the exposed parts 
of the skin. Our lungs labored under the astrin- 
gency of the fumes that found their way into 
them. As a matter of fact, the pleasures of the 
camp fire exist largely in the imagination ; but to 
be fair, its glow drove some of the oppression 
away from our isolated halting places. When 
supper was over and our pipes were lighted — the 
delicate meerschaum upon which its owner lav- 
ished inordinate care, the substantial briers, and 
the cook's odoriferous cutty with a piece of dough 
inserted in a calamitous breech of the bowl — yarns 
were busily spun, and the brighter the blaze was 
the more exciting were the stories told. Lieu- 
tenant Morrison was usually absent from these 
gatherings of wonder - mongers, and could be 
found stretched out on a blanket star-gazing with 
a quadrant, and absorbed in the astronomical obser- 
vations which form an important part of the work 



24 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

of the survey. The scientific men, being young 
and diffident, could only be heard in an occasional 
interrogation, and the burden of narrative fell 
upon the packers and cook, who had no end of 
material to sustain it. Alick had come to Colo- 
rado during the Pike's Peak excitement, and had 
since led a wild life, stock-raising in Texas and 
prospecting for gold among the mountains, from 
Harney's Peak in the Black Hills down to the 
spurs of the San Juan ; Sam had fought through 
the war, and coming out unscathed had since 
been trying to dispose of himself among the ruf- 
fianly free-shooters of border towns ; Nick had 
passed a good part of his young life buffalo-hunt- 
ing on the plains ; and Green Terrill, the cook, 
could boast that he "never had enough liquor 
aboard to make him walk unsteady, and never 
took the good Lord Almighty's name in vain in 
all his life" — which is a great deal more than 
most men who have spent fifteen years in Colorado 
and Nevada can veraciously say for themselves. 
The episodes in the lives of these waifs — the pa- 
tient industry of the gold-seeker, the nerve and 
daring of the huntsman, the ingenuity of the 
scout, and the recklessness of the frontiersman — 
afforded the topics ; and when the resinous pine 
logs sang and the flames leaped to their highest, 
our pulses beat faster as we listened to the strange 
stories told. The cook's inexhaustible theme was 
old times in Denver and intercourse with the In- 



LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 25 

dians on Bitter Creek. He had no faith in the 
noble savage ; and when a humorous Navajo play- 
fully pulled his bow on him, Green quickly and 
seriously cocked his carbine, and the Indian only 
saved his life by the most earnest gesticulations 
of amity and innocence. 

" You bet I ain't goin' to take no stock in dem fel- 
lows," said Green. " Seed too much of dem fur dat. 
Way up on Bitter Creek some of dem dogorned 
Sioux was playin' wild, an' Tom Belcher, what's 
got a big ranch dare, comes to me and says to me 
if I didn't want to herd his cattle for him. ' Well,' 
I says, ' I didn't mind,' and he offered me free dol- 
lars for de night. It was jist about dust when I 
went out into de field where dem cattle was, and 
dare was a big tame steeah wat day called Tom- 
my, dat was jist so quiet dat you could lay down 
beside him. I ain't no fool now ; so, ^thinks I, if 
dare war any of dem fell's about I'd wait an' see ; 
an' I laid me down by Tommy, dat was a kind of 
barricade, you know, an' kep one eye open. James 
River ! " — this was one of the few harmless ex- 
pletives that Green occasionally let off — " James 
River ! Fust one fell' leaped out of de bush ; den 
another, soh, James River ! until dare was six, all 
scrapin' an' whoopin' an' swingin' roun' like a pack 
of mad wolves. Well, I jest got up an' got, and 
says to Tom Belcher when I got to de ranch, 
* Guess I don't want no free doll's,' says I. 
' What's de matter ? ' says he ; ' seed any In- 



26 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

jins ? ' ' Yes,' says I. * Well, dey didn't hurt 
you,' says he. ' No,' says I, * and thank the good 
Lord for it!' Eh?" [A long pause.] "What?" 
[Another pause.] u You bet ! " [A chuckle, end- 
ing in a loud laugh in which all the camp joined.] 
After a burst of this kind five minutes were 
allowed for refreshment in the form of contem- 
plative expectoration ; and if the coyotes in the 
neighborhood were well behaved, they assisted 
with a Wagnerian chorus. m But Green was heard 
at his best in describing old Denver days, when one 
" gentleman " would often shoot at another " gen- 
tleman's " nose simply to see how nearly he could 
graze it. " Dem was de times, afore de railroad 
come in. Of course dare warn't no water-works 
den, jes' a scrapin' of wooden shanties, an' mos' of 
dem was salooms an' faro shops. Dat's been my 
ruin, dat faro has. Seen a lot of fellers come 
down from de mountains with some loose dust, go 

into Bill H 's place over de ole variety theatre, 

an' de game would go on jes' 'bout ten minutes, 
when de lights would go out, an' shoo ! James 
River ! you bet dis hyar ear tingled some. Lord, 
de shots was jus' abuzzing 'bout like hornicks, an' 
de chairs an' tables an' glasses were flyin' roun' 
quite lively now, I jes' tell you ! De music stool 
took me right in de neck, an' I had a sore froat 
fur free weeks after. Eh ? What ? You bet ! 
A fellow carried roun' a man's hand de next day, 
an' showed it too, an' a friend of his'n had another 



LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 27 

man's nose. Why warn't dey arrested ? 'Cause 
no one ever wanted dem two fell's ; dey was too 
influentium in society. I know now ; I've been 
dare afore de railroad come in. Of course dare 
wusn't no water-works den, but dare was a heap 
of money. Jes' a common laborer got his $30 
and $40 a week, and cooks got $100 and $125, 
many and many of 'em. I got $50 myself, and 
de Boots in de same house never shined a pair of 
boots in his life for less dan a dollar. Dem was 
de times afore de railroad come in, an' as soon as 
dat got dare, labor was cheaper, of course, an* 
somehow de old high-toned citizens of de place 
went away." 

Green then inquired if the company had heard 
of Jem Wagener : all the packers knew him quite 
well, and it turned out that he was a sort of 
Nick of the Woods, sworn to kill*every squaw 
and papoose at sight in avengement of the mur- 
der of his own wife and children by the Indians. 
Another half hour was occupied by a narrative of 
his thrilling deeds ; and having by this" time be- 
come sleepy, we retired to our tents for a seven 
hours' rest. 

The afternoon after our passage of the Sangre 
del Cristo we seemed to be threading our way 
over a wide field of weather-beaten stubble or a 
litter of yellow-brown walnut shavings. Not a 
speck of verdure could be seen, nor a sign of 
neither a hedge nor a fence nor a 



28 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

breath of mist. Space and shadow were anni- 
hilated. The most distant objects appeared to 
be within a ten minutes' run, and especially dis- 
tinct were the low irregular banks of snow that 
broke upon the acute horizon with painful inten- 
sity. The level road of decomposed granite was 
hot and yellow, and for miles a serpentine cloud 
of dust floated over our wake. 

The field of stubble was an elevated plateau ; 
the walnut shavings were the weazen, death-like 
sage-bushes ; and the banks of snow that seemed 
to be so near were the Sierra Blanca, the Sangre 
del Cristo, and other peaks from ten to thirty 
miles away. Toiling along for another hour, the 
sun meanwhile beating down upon us with wilt- 
ing ardor despite our altitude — the atmosphere 
and earth voiceless and forsaken — we reached a 
hollow watered by a swift creek, and here our 
eyes were gratified by the bright verdure of a few 
cottonwoods and shrubs. Across the low divide 
that separated this valley from the next we ob- 
tained a glimpse of our destination — a rectangular 
group of adobe buildings, flat-roofed, squat, and 
altogether dispiriting in their unmitigated ugli- 
ness, with the United States flag sultrily clinging 
to a central pole. This was Fort Garland. In 
the southwest, forty or fifty miles away, a long 
row of whitened summits, spurs of the San Juan 
range, were clouded in the smoke of forest fires ; 
and in the east the main range trended toward 



LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 29 

the south until its mountains became mere specks 
to our vision. But the lofty background encircled 
a horribly unvaried desert, with the same charac- 
terizing features, the same absence of fresh colors 
and attractive forms, as our route of the after- 
noon. We wondered how a man could look upon 
it from day to day without yielding to its com- 
municative oppressiveness ; and when we were in- 
side the walls of the fort, we pitied the officers 
and men condemned to live in so desolate a place. 
Military exigencies allow no choice, however, 
and the army news in the papers records the name 
of some one ordered to duty in the Department 
of the Missouri, which probably means to the sol- 
dier concerned several years of unproductive, un- 
rewarded, and wholly unsatisfactory service on 
the wild Western frontier. From Fort Leaven- 
worth, in Kansas, he is ordered to Fort Stanton, 
in New Mexico ; from Fort Stanton to Fort Fet- 
terman, in Wyoming ; from Fort Fetterman to 
Fort Lyon, in Colorado ; and from Fort Lyon, 
perhaps, to Fort Garland. During all this, his 
activity is restrained in every direction, and he 
sinks into a plodding, sullen sort of existence, the 
brightest dream in which is of the limpid rivers 
and succulent verdure nearer the seaboard. Fron- 
tier life suggests a sort of poetic expansiveness to 
the inexperienced, but to the soldier it involves, 
except in the case of an Indian war, a career of 
humdrum routine. 



30 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

Garland is one of the oldest military establish- 
ments in Colorado, and one of the pleasantest, 
though its red adobe or sun-dried brick buildings 
are in a state of increasing and unprepossessing 
dilapidation. At the date of our visit the near- 
est railroad station was Pueblo, eighty miles 
northward, and occasional travelers and the semi- 
weekly mail were the only links between the ex- 
iles and the far-distant, familiar world. Never- 
theless, not an item of discipline was omitted. 
The reveille was beaten at the same moment — 
allowing for the difference of longitude — that 
it rumbled over the waters of New York Bay. 
Guard was mounted and relieved in the fullest 
and neatest dress, and to inspiriting music, even 
though six. men were all the post could muster. 
Reports were submitted and received with the 
same pomp and circumstance as are observed in 
the largest army, and the sentries challenged with 
unremitted vigilance all who passed the gates. 
The only variations to these exacting formalities 
were when intelligence arrived of Indian depre- 
dations, and a company of cavalry was sent out ; 
or when the guard-house was broken and a pris- 
oner escaped. This latter episode was of frequent 
occurrence. Not a few risked capture and severe 
punishment for the chance of an escape from the 
confinement and dull surroundings. 

Many recruits are sent out from the East to the 
West, including some young German immigrants, 



LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 31 

who, landing without a knowledge of English and 
failing to obtain employment, enlist in order to 
learn the language ; for the idioms of which, at 
least, the army is doubtless an excellent school. 
We met such a one in the person of a young 
architect, who when he arrived in New York 
could not speak a word of English, and who, 
when his little fortune had been reduced to the 
total of a few dollars, sought out an enlisting 
sergeant, and was accepted. The sergeant took 
him to all the beer-gardens in the city, and treat- 
ed him with the most delicate consideration, al- 
lowing him to pay the expenses of both, and as- 
suring him, as was evident, that a soldier's life 
was an easy one at this rate. But when the last 
dollar of his shallow purse had been expended, 
he was sent with several others to Governor's 
Island, where the petty officers berated him vigor- 
ously for misunderstanding their orders. He made 
many ludicrous mistakes, of course, and his Eng- 
lish-speaking comrades subjected him to all kinds 
of practical jokes. All the articles of equipment 
supplied for him were stolen, except a pair of 
blue trousers, and, as he was determined to save 
these, he hid them in one of the cannons. On the 
day following some dignitary was either en- 
tering or leaving port, and a salute was ordered to 
be fired. The men stood at the different guns, and 
loaded them, and each went off in succession until 
the turn came for the last one. In vain the gun- 



32 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

ner applied the light to the breech of this, in vain 
the officers raged, and in vain the completion of 
the salute was listened for. The thing would not 
" go off," and, when an investigation was made, 
the cause became apparent in the recruit's black 
and greasy trousers. After a few months' proba- 
tion at Governor's Island, he was ordered to a 
regiment in New Mexico, and thence from fort 
to fort until he eventually reached Garland. 

There is one pleasant feature about Fort Gar- 
land. The log and adobe houses of the rancher os 
do not in the least exceed the Spartan limit of a 
few chairs, a table, and a chromo in matters of 
decoration or luxury. But the officers contrive 
to crowd many significant little evidences of refine- 
ment into their incommodious quarters, notwith- 
standing the difficulty of obtaining anything ex- 
cept the necessaries of life. The rooms are in some 
instances carpeted with buffalo-robes and bear- 
skins, while the walls are adorned with guns and 
relics of the chase. To members of our expedition 
coming out of the field, this revelation of domes- 
ticity and comfort proved a grateful change from 
the hardships of an American explorers' camp. 

A railway now passes through Fort Garland, 
and a little city has sprung out of the surrounding 
desert : but four years ago very few strangers 
found their way there. Occasionally a solitary 
" prospector " came with all his immediate posses- 
sions — a pick-axe, a spade, a rifle, and a bag of pro- 



LIFE AT A FRONTIER POST. 33 

visions — heaped up on the back of a little donkey — 
his future and greater wealth lying in the gaunt 
mountains of the San Juan, to which he was bound ; 
some straggling Apaches loitered within the fort 
for a few hours ; a Mexican bull-team plodded 
by with a heavy load of wool ; and a pair of 
stockmen delayed a moment to try the whisky 
at the sutler's store before they galloped away 
to a neighboring ranch. But in addition to the 
travelers a curious little society of mixed ele- 
ments gathered about the fort. There was a 
fresh - colored collegian from Cambridge, Eng- 
land, who had come hither, of all places in the 
world, to seek his fortune ; the agent of a land 
company ; and a mysterious idle vagrant known 
as the "Major," who was understood to be an 
ex-Confederate officer. The Major's peculiarity 
was an odd manner of making a secret* of all his 
communications. He would confide an innocent 
remark about the mules or weather to us as though 
it was a key to some enormous conspiracy ; and 
in the same way he would ask us the price of shoe- 
leather in the lowest and most suspicious of un- 
dertones. His knowledge of Washington society 
was inexhaustible ; but this was of little practical 
benefit to him, as we found that he was working 
on a ranch for forty dollars a month, and before 
we left the fort he offered himself to us as a la- 
borer with the pack-train. 

Everybody at the fort seemed anxious to get 



34 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

away ; the only exception was the sutler, who was 
making a fortune. Much of the comfort at a 
frontier post depends on the character of the sut- 
ler's store, and that at Garland was one of the best, 
including in its stock every imaginable and many 
unimaginable articles, from Wiltshire hams to Mex- 
ican spurs, patent medicines to buffalo robes, sta- 
tionery to saddles, and ammunition to cosmetics. 
The customers were also heterogeneous, including 
the officers and men of the fort, the passing emi- 
grants and Indians, the miners and ranchmen, and 
some Mexican senoritas whose chief weakness was 
articles of Philadelphia perfumery and Birming- 
ham jewelry. 

While we sat on the bench in front of the 
sutler's store one evening, the old fort was trans- 
formed into a very pretty object under the magi- 
cal influence of the brilliant sunset. The sur- 
rounding sandy plain melted into gold, and the 
mountains were flooded with purple. A pale star 
rose over the eastern ridge, and while in the west 
the sky was glowing with gorgeous colors, in the 
east the light was expiring in a deepening blue. 
But it is only for a moment in a summer's day that 
Garland looks inviting ; and as we left it to resume 
our course, we again pitied the men condemned to 
live the year round in this lonely spot. 



MEXICANS OF SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 35 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MEXICANS OF TfeTE SOUTHWESTERN TERRI- 
TORIES. 

Characteristics of Sierra Blanca and Baldy Peak — The Plazas 
of Conejos — A Polite Alcalde — Adobe Architecture — An 
Unfavorable View of El Gringo — The Superstitious Rites 
of the Penitentes — A Modern Crucifixion — The Melodious 
Voices of the Senoritas. 

Seen from the plain near Fort Garland, Sierra 
Blanca and Baldy Peak loom up romantically. 
The upper ridge of the former is broken into sev- 
eral pinnacles with gentle curves between, and its 
sides are furrowed with deep hollows steeped in 
the nebulous haze of the clouds. Baldy is almost 
a pyramid, with barren walls that end in a sharp 
point twelve thousand feet high, cloven by trans- 
verse fissures, in which glaring masses of snow 
lie until the middle of June. The farther we re- 
treated from them the nearer they appeared to be ; 
and two days after we left Garland, when they were 
thirty miles distant, they seemed larger and more 
distinct than when we were within five miles of 
their bases. Fifty miles is as a stone's throw, and 
a person unused to the delusive effects of the at- 
mosphere might readily be induced to attempt a 
walk of twenty-five miles in 'ten minutes. 



36 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

Continuing in a southerly course from Blanca, 
a range of peaks extends, so uniform in their ele- 
vation and shape that it is not easy to realize how 
high they are. But among them are many that 
soar eleven thousand feet, and a few that are not 
far short of thirteen thousand. The eye follows 
tliem for nearly twenty miles, finding inexhausti- 
ble beauties in their soft outlines, the pine and fir- 
strewn buttresses, and the strange play of light 
mid shadow that dyes them now a purple, then an 
unfathomable blue, and, toward morning, a hue 
like that of an opal held up to the sun. But no 
one can understand the majesty and wonders of 
these mountains who has not seen them in a storm, 
when massive volumes of rolling clouds seem rent 
asunder by their jagged peaks, and stream down 
upon them like the flames of a pale phosphores- 
cent fire. Then the prairie reaches before us, a 
desert of green and yellow, and the foothills are 
enveloped in mysterious and impenetrable shadows, 
while the uplands are illuminated by white gleams 
that bring out their contour with marvelous clear- 
ness. As the tumultuous clouds come floating out 
of the west, they break into vertical streaks and 
shreds of gray — so unusual in form to one who 
belongs to the East, that he alternates between 
transport and amazement. A luminous mist rises 
from the basins near the peaks as these fleecy 
waves beat against the pinnacles, and their volume 
is dispersed. The snows become brilliantly white, 



MEXICANS OP SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 37 

and the eye is dimmed and pained, and turns 
away for relief. The extinct volcanic force that 
upheaved the divide seems still to exert its influ- 
ence on the atmosphere, and to wreak itself in the 
wonderful forms of impalpable vapor. 

Southward from Garland two singular dome- 
like peaks are seen, isolated from all others in the 
chain. These are the San Antonio and the Ute, 
both of which are over ten thousand feet high ; 
and to the west the snowy crests of the San Juan 
range loom massively in the clear air, with a hun- 
dred other mountains in between. But our path 
over the level was unsatisfactory and unlovely, 
interesting only in the manifold evidences it pre- 
sented of spent volcanoes and the different geolo- 
gical periods. Here a sandy ridge reminded us 
of the drift, and a little farther on we came upon 
a sharp needle of basaltic formation *that pointed 
to fires long since burned out. In places the 
ground consists of decomposed granite that only 
needs water to make it fruitful. Farther on huge 
bowlders of scoria are strewn in every direction, 
imbedded in the hillside, and lying prone in the 
middle of plains, where they fell centuries ago, 
fresh from seething craters. A coyote sneaked 
away at our approach, and an antelope bounded 
into a thicket. The chattering bark of the im- 
pudent little prairie dogs was heard almost inces- 
santly, and their bristling tails were seen whisking 
above their mounds. The road dwindled into an 



38 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

indistinct trail, and Lieutenant Morrison rode for- 
ward, bending over his horse's head, to pick out 
the obliterated footprints of some hunter or In- 
dian trader who had traveled our way before. 
About midday the men brought pieces of bread 
out of their saddle-bags and ate a frugal lunch. 
Then, when the sun was on the night side of the 
zenith, we sighted a line of green in the distance 
which indicated water, and after a hot and dusty 
march of nine or ten hours, we encamped for the 
night on the banks of a rapid little mountain 
stream. 

Our second camp after leaving Garland was 
on the San Antonio River, and thence we went 
to Conejos in search of a Mexican guide, to show 
us the best route over the mountains to Tierra 
Amarilla. Like all the important New Mexican 
towns, Conejos is subdivided into several villages 
or plazas a mile or so apart, each consisting of 
about a dozen adobe dwellings, built irregularly 
over a small area, without separate inclosures. 
The Mexican of the Southwestern territories is 
not extravagant in matters of architecture. He 
is not the man by temperament or inclination to 
quarry stone and shape it for a shelter, when 
lighter material can be found ; and his chief aim 
in constructing his dwelling has apparently been 
to succeed with as little labor as possible. His 
feeble indolence was not likely to express itself 
in such robust edifices of rock as some of the 



MEXICANS OF SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 39 

hardier Indians have left on the cliffs to commem- 
orate their former greatness. Had the sun always 
shone and the winds blown steadily from the 
south, he would not have built at all ; but favor- 
able as the climate is, an occasional tornado in 
summer and the snows of winter made the erec- 
tion of a house a painfully unavoidable necessity. 
Nature accommodated him, however, and, which- 
ever site he chose, he had to go no farther than 
the spot on which he stood for building materials. 
The earth only needed mixing with a little water 
and straw to make it adobe. Adobe, in point of 
fact, is mud, and by spreading it while it is moist 
over a rude inclosure of logs, or shaping in into 
bricks, it can be fashioned without much labor or 
design into a passably comfortable habitation. 
This was all that was necessary, and this was all 
that was done. 

If anything is calculated to make a traveler 
feel homesick, it is a collection of these adobe 
houses. The prairie-dog throws up a mound 
around his dwelling ; shapeliness and purpose are 
visible in the nomadic Indian's wigwam ; the 
bamboo house of the South Sea islander has its 
overlapping roof of palms ; but the home of the 
New Mexican is a cheerless one-storied rectangle, 
as unpicturesque as an empty soap box, without 
chimneys, gables, or eaves — four flat, expression- 
less walls covered in by a flat unmeaning lid, 
without a Curve or projection of any kind to re- 



40 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

lieve the dead-weight of monotony. Neither 
mold nor creeper touches it ; age leaves no mark 
of its caresses upon it, except, perhaps, an un- 
seemly gap here and there, where a portion of the 
adobe has fallen away. The door has no panels, 
the window no frame. Barren surfaces meet 
the eye everywhere, not one sign of beauty or 
strength ; and the crevices are infested by swarms 
of lizards, beetles, and hornets, to say nothing 
of occasional tarantulas, scorpions, and rattle- 
snakes. 

The interior matches the exterior in its prison- 
like, angular appearance. The two or three 
square apartments into which it is divided con- 
sist of adobe walls, floors, and ceilings, furnished 
with a small table, a few kitchen utensils, and a 
roll of bedding. They have the one merit of be- 
ing warm in winter and cool in summer ; and it 
would be unfair to overlook their extreme clean- 
liness, for however filthy a Mexican woman 
may be personally, she invariably keeps a clean 
house, and is never done scrubbing and white- 
washing. 

Yet, poverty-stricken and destitute of other 
decorations as these rude houses are, the poorest 
of them can usually boast of a bit of religious 
finery ; and though a chair or a table is not in- 
cluded in the furniture, a crucifix dangles over 
the hearth, and a gaudy Nassau Street print of 
the Last Supper, the manger of Bethlehem, or 



MEXICANS OF SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 41 

the Madonna and Child may be found hanging 
against the wall. 

Lieutenant Morrison and the writer visited 
the principal plaza together. On our way we ac- 
costed a small boy for directions. Doffing his 
hat, he pointed to a building much larger than 
the others, which he said was the residence of the 
alcalde. The New Mexican is usually suave, and 
this small boy, whose felt hat had lost its brim, 
and whose ragged trousers were suspended over 
the shoulders by a string, saluted us with the grave 
courtesy of a gentleman, scratching himself the 
while with a furtive vigor that was both amusing 
and suspicious. But the alcalde — in which coun- 
try shall we find one more smooth, dignified, and 
hospitable than he ? When he had demonstrated 
our way to us in voluble Spanish and by earnest 
gestures, he invited us to dismount and take a 
cup of coffee or a glass of wine. He was the 
magistrate of the town, at once the mayor, the 
police justice, and the town council — as compre- 
hensive a character as the survivor in Gilbert's 
ballad of " The Nancy Bell." His house was a 
castle of its kind, and had been built when In- 
dians were troublesome on the border. All the 
windows looked out upon an interior courtyard, 
and the door was wide and strong. A look of 
disappointment passed over the reverend senor's 
brown face because we declined his hospitalities, 
and as we left him he reiterated his directions in 



42 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

his anxiety lest we should mistake them. But 
all New Mexicans are not as agreeable as this one 
was, as the reader will presently see. 

New Mexico, Arizona, and Southern Colorado 
present the anomalous spectacle of a population 
alien in blood, language, faith, and customs from 
the government in the election of which it parti- 
cipates. When the former territory was annexed 
to the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe 
Hidalgo in 1848, sixty thousand impoverished 
and ignorant people were made citizens. They 
remain impoverished, ignorant, and unassimilated 
to-day. The preponderating lower classes are in 
a state of peonage, thriftless and illiterate : a few 
wealthy persons control the trade of the terri- 
tory, and a few astute Americans have a complete 
hold of the politics. More than fifty-two per 
cent, of the population can neither speak English, 
nor read nor write any language. Most of the 
members of the House of Representatives can 
only read and write Spanish, which is the lan- 
guage of the courts and church. In conversation 
a patois is used which bears about the same de- 
gree of relationship to the mother-tongue that the 
dialect of the Canadian habitant bears to Parisian 
French. 

In faith the people are simple, obedient, mira- 
cle-loving believers in the most authoritative and 
absolute Roman Catholicism. Previous to the ac- 
quisition of the territory by the United States, 



MEXICANS OP SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 43 

their nearest bishop lived over a thousand miles 
away in old Mexico, and seldom if ever visited so 
remote a diocese as this. The priests exercised 
temporal and spiritual powers in the several par- 
ishes, and were indescribably corrupt in the use 
of those powers for their personal benefit and the 
shameless satisfaction of their lusts. Never was 
religion further perverted. It became the mere 
mask of license, and its ministers the priests, not 
of Christ, but of lechery and greed. At the time 
when the present archbishop was appointed, he 
could not close his eyes to the condition of affairs, 
and summarily dismissed a large number of priests 
for open immorality ; but despite his efforts, which 
have been sincere and zealous, the Church is still 
represented in many distant settlements by men 
who are a disgrace and danger not only to Chris- 
tianity, but to manhood and freedom. The bish- 
op is a native of France, and most of those under 
him are French Jesuits, who, while they are not 
guilty of downright corruption, have not proved 
themselves in the history of their order the safest 
guardians of an ignorant people. 

The smallest settlements include a church, and 
whenever the Mexican has risen from the archi- 
tectural squalor of his squat adobes, his efforts to 
attain a higher standard have been spent on the 
edifice that proclaims itself in the cross. In the 
most distant and impoverished villages a little sane- 
tuary is found, raising its head a few feet abovr 



44 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

the huts around it, and presenting in its belfry and 
cornice the only attempt at ornamentation visible. 
The poverty within is almost pathetic. The bare 
mud walls are not more than twelve or fifteen 
feet high, and two small windows admit a drowsy 
yellow light into the dusty interior. The altar is 
adorned with cheap engravings, cheap paper flow- 
ers, cheap plaster images, cheap tallow candles, 
and cheap paper lace. It looks like a toy-shop 
window in firework times. The beams in the ceil- 
ing are as rough as the woodman's axe left them. 
No chairs or seats are provided, and the congrega- 
tion crouch, Indian fashion, on the hard mud floor. 
In the larger towns, which are supplied with a 
resident priest, the church bell is never done ring- 
ing for services ; but in the far-off districts a 
wandering padre trots into town some Sunday 
morning and out of town on Monday morning, 
not to appear again for three weeks or a month. 

The extraordinary credulity and fanaticism of 
the people are seen in the strongest light, however, 
during Holy Week, when large numbers through- 
out the territory participate in the exercises of the 
Society of Penitentes, which is discountenanced 
by the priests, though it originally sprang from 
the Church. The headquarters of this organiza- 
tion are at Mora, and its branches extend in every 
direction, including among its members a consid- 
erable part of the population, both male and fe- 
male. It meets in the Morada, or assembly hall, 



MEXICANS OF SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 45 

and its transactions are secret, but its avowed ob- 
ject is the expiation of sin by the infliction of vio- 
lent bodily punishment. Toward Good Friday 
there is an unusual activity in the society, and the 
town hall is occupied nearly every evening by 
meetings, which are signalized to the outsiders by 
dismal cries, groans, and the mysterious rattling of 
chains — preparations which result on Holy Thurs- 
day in the public scourging of those members who 
desire to chasten themselves and make atonement 
for their offenses. The day is regarded as a 
festival, and a crowd of eager spectators gather 
about the hall. After many preliminary ceremo- 
nies, the door is thrown open, and the penitentes 
file into the April twilight of the snow-covered 
street to the doleful music of a shrill reed instru- 
ment played by an attendant. They are destitute 
of other clothing than a thin pair of under-draw- 
ers, and their heads and faces are hidden in white 
cotton wraps, so that their neighbors may not, by 
recognizing them, have cause to wonder what 
crime they expiate. The leader staggers under the 
weight of a heavy cross about twenty feet high, 
and his companions, shivering with cold as the 
wind beats their naked bodies, carry thick bunches 
of the thorny cactus in their hands. The atten- 
dants place them in position, and at a given signal 
the procession moves, chanting a plaintive hymn to 
the time of the musician's pipe. At every second 
step the men strike themselves over the shoulders. 



46 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

with the cactus, leaving a deeper scar with each 
blow, until the skin is broken and the lacerated 
flesh pours its blood in a carmine trail on the snow. 
Several are bound at the ankles by rawhide thongs, 
a dagger pointed at both ends being secured be- 
tween the two feet in such a way that when they 
stumble, it stabs them in a most sensitive part. 
The sight becomes sickening with horror, and re- 
pressed moans of anguish fill the air as the cactus 
brushes afresh the streaming, quivering wounds. 
No one is allowed to retire, and when the cross- 
bearer sinks to the ground from exhaustion, the 
attendants quickly raise him and urge him on again 
with his heavy burden. The route is traced along 
the white road in crimson footsteps; and after pa- 
rading the alleys of the town, the procession turns 
off toward a steep hill, in ascending which their 
bare feet are cut to the bone by the sharp project- 
ing rocks. The eminence gained, preparations are 
made for a new and surpassing torture. The cross 
is laid upon the ground, and the bearer is so firmly 
bound to it by lengths of rawhide that the circu- 
lation of the blood is retarded, and a gradual dis- 
coloration of the body follows. His arms are out- 
stretched along the transverse beam, to which a 
sword, pointed at both ends like the dagger before 
mentioned, is attached ; and if he allows them to 
drop a single inch from their original position, the 
weapon penetrates the flesh. Amid the unearthly 
groans of the bystanders and the shrill piping of 



MEXICANS OF SOUTHWESTERN TERRITORIES. 47 

the musician, the cross is raised, and the crucified 
turns his agonized face to heaven, while the blood 
slowly trickles from his wounds and a livid hue 
overspreads his skin. How long he remains is 
merely a question of endurance, for eventually 
he loses consciousness, and not until then is he re- 
leased. At the conclusion of this barbarous per- 
formance, which occasionally results in death, the 
penitentes return to the Morada, and the celebra- 
tion is brought to a close. 

In personal appearance the New Mexicans are 
spare and brown-skinned. Their hair and eyes are 
lustrously black, and their speech is low and plea- 
sant. You can not know how sweet the human 
voice is capable of being until you have heard one 
of their woman say/'iVb sabe" or " Quien sabe" 
She utters it with a gentle, melting, longing into- 
nation, to be enjoyed and not to be described. But 
New Mexican women are not all sweetness and 
beauty. Their features are irregular, and their 
forms squat. Some of them study comfort more 
than delicacy, and in hot weather are content to 
flutter about in a chemise and flannel petticoat. 
Out of doors they swathe themselves in long 
black shawls, covering the head and part of the 
face in a picturesque manner that reminds one of 
the East. A friend of mine maintains that there 
is a still further similarity between the extremes 
of life here and those of ancient Palestine. The 
houses are primitive enough certainly, and the 



48 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

maidens carry earthen vessels of water on their 
heads in the same manner that Rebecca did in the 
time of the patriarchs. 

The only American usually settled in the Mexi- 
can towns is the post trader, with a wife or a 
daughter, in whose house we perhaps find a piano, 
a sewing-machine, and a rocking-chair, things that 
strike us as being prodigious and exceptional luxu- 
ries. After a month of camp-life, indeed, the 
smallest suggestion of home and house comforts 
came upon us very gratefully. We had traveled 
days together without seeing a living soul, until 
we would have willingly exchanged a hundred 
miles of the mountains for a glance at a New Eng- 
land village. But bacon and bread had become 
appetizing, the shooting-coat had been altogether 
abandoned, and as the greenhorn, with the brim 
of his hat disreputably turned down, lay in his 
shelter tent, smoking in the evening after a hard 
day's march, he felt like a veteran. 



AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 49 

CHAPTER IV. 

AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 

The Luxuriant Vegetation of the Conejos Canon. — Sleeping 
under Ice in June. — The Canon of Los Pinos. — The Head 
waters of the Rio Chama. — The Sublimity of Night in the 
Mountains. — Sam Abbey's Encounter with the Cinnamon 
Bear. — The Coyotes' Serenade. 

From a camp near Guadalupe, which is one of 
the plazas of Conejos, we followed the main branch 
of the Conejos River for about three miles, and 
then diverged on a trail through a pass in the 
steep walls to the west, and over a heavily wooded 
acclivity, with a crest about eight hundred feet 
above the level. The way up the hill was obstruct- 
ed in the earlier stages by fragments of rock scat- 
tered in every direction, like the debris of a spent 
shower of meteors ; and as we mounted higher, 
another difficulty appeared in a dense forest of Cot- 
tonwood, with an almost impassable undergrowth 
of shrubs and brambles. The facility with which 
this tree adapts itself to circumstances is one of 
the marvels of the vegetable world. When it has 
room, it soars to a height of seventy feet, spread- 
ing itself out like an old yew ; but it seems to 
thrive equally well in a confined space, where hun- 
dreds of its species are limited in growth to six 
4 



50 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

feet, and concentrated within a few inches of each 
other. Its leaves are like those of the lilac, a small 
oval in shape, with the lightness and sensitiveness 
of the aspen and the glitter of the silver poplar. 
But most beautiful is the bark, which in nearly- 
all the ages of the tree is a shade of soft gray, 
and as smooth on the surface as a piece of 
ivory. 

Climbing higher, we became entangled in this 
maze of cottonwoocl, which hid us from one an- 
other, and knotted itself in our bridles and stir- 
rups, making our progress more laborious than 
ever. The grass was tall and rank, and sprinkled 
with blue, yellow, red, and purple flowers, the blue 
and yellow vying with the sky and sun, which at 
intervals were revealed through a break in the 
thicket. Occasionally a breath of wind swept 
among the cottonwoods, and their leaves shook 
and glistened like the drops of a silvery rain. 

So we went on, with our arms extended over our 
mules' heads to ward off the obstructing branch- 
es, until we came to a pile of moss-covered lava 
at the head of the farther slope. Beneath us was 
the junction of two branches of the main canon 
— two deep cuttings, with high, precipitous banks, 
leading from an even ridge to a flat bottom. Here 
the cottonwoods were still more profuse and the 
other vegetation still more redundant. The bed 
of the canon was matted by a luxuriant shrub, 
called, our Mexican guide told me, the jara, with 



AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 51 

leaves a vivid green and stalks a bright red. Un- 
derneath this there was a low rippling sound, and 
when we swept the branches aside, we discovered 
a brooklet running with the bluish water of freshly- 
melted snows. Snows ? Yes : with all the abun- 
dance of foliage, in the middle of an exceptionally 
hot June, a white mantle still lay on the shady 
parts of this canon, eight thousand feet above the 
level of the sea. The banks were covered with 
cotton woods varying in height from six to seven- 
ty feet, all trembling, all gleaming, as the wind 
touched them. Some majestic pines, with rugged 
limbs and dusky green foliage, were superadded 
to these, and dense as the living timber was, 
thousands of dead trunks lay on the hillsides, 
where they had fallen in the last tempest. Ahead 
of us a cloud of blue smoke wreathed itself to 
heaven, and presently we came upon a*wide patch 
of land wasted and blackened by fires that were 
still spreading. 

As we went through the hollows the sound 
of our steps was drowned in the beds of mosses 
and ferns, and numberless wild flowers constant- 
ly tempted us to dismount and pick them. 

Then, after resting a night, and on the next 
morning finding our tents sheathed in an armor of 
frozen rain, we struck into another labyrinth, 
crossing the main branch, and continuing on our 
way over fertile valleys and snowy ridges until we 
reached the head of a declivity looking down on 



52 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

the two arms of the canon of Los Pinos, which 
formed a junction. 

If you would realize the scene, think of two 
awfully deep ravines, extending at an obtuse 
angle from each other, one toward the south- 
west, the other toward the east — two ravines with 
slanting walls of hemlock, fir, and pine which 
at their bases are only separated by the hair's 
breadth of a rushing stream, these walls forming 
themselves at intervals into perpendicular cliffs of 
green basaltic rock. Think of a tempestuous sky, 
with ragged storm-clouds careering in massive vol- 
umes overhead, and a perpetual twilight below 
casting weird shadows upon the lower slopes. 
Think of a strong wind whistling in fitful gusts 
around the corners of enormous bowlders held 
loosely in their places by a pebbly soil: of wintry 
gloom and tumultuous motion. Then, possibly, 
you will have an understanding of some of the 
elements that give the scene its impressive and 
peculiar grandeur. 

For about four hours we meandered a trail not 
more than ten inches wide, worn in the left wall 
of the canon stretching to the north. This preca- 
rious foothold was at least three hundred feet 
above the bed of the stream, which bubbled along 
like a vein of burnished metal, and at least four 
hundred feet below the upper edge of the wall. 
In some places it was overhung by crags or abut- 
ments of cavernous rock eroded into quaint re- 



AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 53 

semblances of artificial things, and again it wound 
itself into the shadows of massive bowlders that 
seemed balanced on needle points. The timber 
was scarce here. A few charred pine stems, 
straight as arrows, shot into the air, divested of 
branch and leaf, intensely black in contrast with 
the pallid cottonwood trunks that lay in waste on 
the gravelly canon-sides. Out on the point of a 
rock an eagle sat brooding, and swooped away in 
an ever- increasing circle when he saw us. The 
turbulent stream that foamed over the ledges in 
its course was silent at our height; but our voices 
were drowned in the steady roar of the wind, 
which swept through the canon with the sound 
of the waters at Niagara. Overhead — what was* 
there ? A strip of brightest blue, dazzling in its 
purity; a constant drift of little puffs of white and 
great volumes of rainy gray that hurried on with 
wild messages into the distant east. 

A frosted mass of snow lay here and there in 
the fissures, with threads of water trickling from 
it into the bed of the stream. Our breathing was 
labored, and our lungs felt raw and burning. 
The trail was graven across the brow of the rock 
in zigzags forming a succession of hills, in climb- 
ing which we were compelled to dismount and 
lead our mules. But a little farther on the canon 
turned to the east, leaving in its curve an opening 
through the west wall by which we passed into a 
marshy basin surrounded by hills of pine and 



54 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

matted by a thick growth of shrubbery. Crossing 
this to its farther divide, we lost the trail, and the 
pack train was detained while several members of 
the party started off in different directions to look 
for it. 

Just ahead of us, apparently separating two out- 
lets of the valley, was a knoll, which I ascended 
in order to get a glimpse of the surrounding coun- 
try. The wind had fallen by this time, and there 
was only a gentle soughing among the pines and 
firs. The path was strewn with logs, some so far 
decayed that they crumbled to dust under my 
feet, and others the fresh wreck of the last tem- 
pest. The air was balmy with the strong scent of 
resin, and ministered a grateful ease to my wearied 
lungs. Several brown squirrels, startled at my 
approach, darted into their hiding-places with a 
timid cry, and stared me out of countenance with 
their sparkling eyes. The least sound fell with 
distinctness in the hush, and awoke ghostly re- 
verberations among the fastnesses of rock sur- 
rounding. 

I climbed leisurely to the crest of the hill, and 
came suddenly to the very edge of a cliff looking 
down upon a scene that must have made a life- 
long impression on the most trivial mind. Seven 
or eight hundred feet below me was a chasm, ex- 
tending twenty miles in a straight course, and 
imprisoned by precipitous heights heavily tim- 
bered with dusky trees. Far away into a dreamy 



AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 55 

space of blue these two chains of mountains rose 
and fell like the billows of a sea, with their 
ridges drawn against the sky as clearly as a silhou- 
ette, and their thick mantles of dark green, that 
seemed beds of soft mosses in the distance, span- 
gled with rainbow crags of basalt and sandstone. 
The cliff on which I stood was a blood-red, and 
opposite to me were three sharp spires supported 
from the face of a yellow stone bluff, like the tur- 
ret window of a Normandy house. But it was 
not the extent of the prospect nor the grandeur of 
form and color that made this scene so impressive. 
The sun was still high, and the sky without a fleck, 
yet - the silent space below was steeped in a mellow, 
cloistral twilight. It was as though the earth had 
gone back in a dream to the time when men's feet 
were circumscribed by one garden. I was on the 
edge of a world where human heart had never 
beaten, and where human hand had never worked 
to take away the melancholy and sanctity of 
primitive nature. What influence was it that 
exerted itself upon me as I looked over those waves 
of hills, the dark ravine between, and the stilly 
forests enveloped in a profound haze? I felt a 
wild despair, a heaviness of heart, that I was glad 
enough to relieve in answering the call of the men 
with the pack train. 

The trail had been found again, and turning 
to the right of the knoll, a few hundred feet 
farther on we entered a grove of noble pines with 



56 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

brown-red bark, the shadows of which made a 
blackness so deep and silent that we glanced 
around warily as we passed under them. This 
fear-inspiring quality was increased by the boom- 
ing note of the screech-owl that anon broke out 
among the topmost branches with the muffled 
sound of a death-bell. The grass here was pro- 
fuse again, and the wild flowers flashed out in 
greater variety than ever. By-and-by we reached 
the crest of a steep hill covered with cotton- 
woods, and descending this, we were underneath 
the cliff on which I had stood half an hour before, 
locked in a glen inclosed on three sides by pine- 
covered walls ; the fourth side abutted on the 
ravine, with its vista of hills and mysteries of 
blue. A little way below another canon ran into 
the main, and two noisy brooklets joined arms to 
form the head waters of the Rio Chama. 

Amid this solitude, so far away from home 
and friends, we pitched our tents and lit our 
camp fire. On one side of us there was a bank of 
supple shrubs several feet high, with vagrant 
daisies bestrewn in the moist earth around, and, 
though no water could be seen, the voice of a 
stream arose from under this bowery canopy in a 
lightsome trill. The air was clear and exhilarat- 
ing, and scented with the pungent balsam of the 
pine and the languishing sweetness of the wild 
rose. A sprightly humming-bird stole among the 
flowers, and robbed them of their honey with his 



AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 57 

dainty bill. But far prettier to me than this 
gaudy fellow, with his airs and graces, were the 
butterflies, especially those of a tiny species, blu- 
ish in color, looking like violets that had been 
torn from their stems by the wind, and by some 
fairy power endowed with wings. I think these 
beauties must grow by what they feed on, for 
hosts of them fluttered about the clusters of blue- 
bells that are more plentiful in this piny mountain 
valley than on the heathery hills of Scotland. 

And soon the night came — the night that in 
this region reveals as many wonders as it hides. 
The first indication of its approach was a glow on 
the sandstone bluffs, deepening every moment, 
until these masses of red and yellow seemed like 
jewels in the green surrounding them. The azure 
sky faded away into a sea of pearl, in which some 
stray patches of white were floating* lazily. Be- 
neath this tranquil space of exquisite color the 
pines in the canon remained heavy and dark, 
wrapped in an unaltered gloom. But anon — mar- 
velous touch ! marvelous change ! — the west was 
lighted by a sensuous crimson, growing warmer 
each moment and fast overspreading the whole 
heaven. The sky, the clouds, the bluffs, were 
suffused in the passionate light, and by degrees 
the dim ravine lying so coldly in the earth was 
struck by the ruddy glow that kissed the embat- 
tled forests on the slopes, until the red pines 
blushed like maples in the autumn. For a sub- 



58 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

lime moment all the earth and heaven was swept 
by the flame, and the white tents in the glen con- 
fessed it in a shade of pink. Then it expired by 
as many changes as it came, and the sky became 
wan and cold. The shadows spread out their 
arms farther and farther, and the ravine became 
fathomless in a mysterious darkness that, impene- 
trable as it was, seemed to admit the vision into 
its depths. 

The blaze of the camp fire leaped high, and 
the pine logs crackled merrily in the frosty air. 
By-and-by the stars came out, and the mountain 
ridges were illuminated by a phosphorescent light 
like that of St. Elmo, which men at sea sometimes 
see burning on the yard-arms, and believe to be 
the spirits of their dead comrades. 

From this memorable camp we struck down 
the canon, and again pitched our tents where the 
west fork of the Chama enters the east between 
two high embankments of rocky soil. "We lay 
here for several days, and here we had our first 
taste of sport. The country was full of game, 
and a trained hunter need not have gone far in 
any direction to obtain an interview with either 
black, cinnamon, or grizzly bear. A Mexican who 
joined us at the town of Conejos borrowed ten 
cartridges and my carbine from me. He returned 
eight of the cartridges, and brought into camp a 
grouse and a magnificent deer. But a military 
exploring party finds no time for sporting — at 



AN UNBEATEN TRAIL. 59 

least, ours did not find any ; and unless the game 
came into camp, or ran against us on the road, 
we seldom had a chance to spend our powder. 

One afternoon, however, Sam Abbey, one of 
the packers, ran into camp, with a pale face and 
his revolver drawn. "I — saw — a — bear — within 
— six — feet — of — me — and — it — laughed — at — 
me ! " he exclaimed breathlessly. " Come — along 
— boys — an' — let's — have — a — shot ! " 

He had been lying asleep on the grass a short 
distance away when a panting sound awoke him, 
and as he opened his drowsy eyes he saw an enor- 
mous cinnamon bear gazing at him and smacking 
its rough lips. No wonder he was scared. A 
cinnamon bear is a terrible antagonist for a man 
with only a revolver to defend himself ; and as 
Sam raised himself on his elbows, the ruthless 
monster studied him, with the intention of select- 
ing a soft part to begin with evident in its small, 
ferocious, hungry-looking eyes. Our valiant com- 
rade sighed, and sorrowfully cocked his six-shooter, 
for he knew that if he fired and missed a vital 
part, the subsequent proceedings would have no 
pleasurable interest for him. But the bear pricked 
its ears at the click of the hammer, and, with a 
laudable desire to avoid difficulties, waddled away 
down the hollow of the river. Sam could now 
feel the earth under him again, and sped to camp 
with the news of his adventure. 

Mr. Karl, our assistant topographer, responded 



60 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

to his call for volunteers, and went to the scene 
of the encounter with the hero, who now averred 
that the bear did not laugh, but " kinder grinned." 

Poor Bruin had crossed the river, and was 
quietly ascending the opposite bank, when his pur- 
suers espied him and pointed their carbines at 
him. Apparently understanding their intentions, 
he turned round and ran down the bank to have 
fair fight with them ; but before he reached the 
bottom three bullets plowed through his body, and 
he rolled against a bowlder — a dead bear. May 
he rest in peace ! Better eating we never had in 
our mess. His meat was stewed, roasted, and 
fried. It was palatable in every form, tender as 
a spring lamb's hind-quarter, juicy as the standing 
ribs of a prime Herefordshire ox, and of as agree- 
able a flavor as venison. 

The night following this episode was starlight 
and frosty, and our little company, reduced in 
number to six by the absence of Lieutenant Mor- 
rison, Mr. Clark, and two others, gathered around 
a sparkling fire of logs. The mountain ridges were 
pale with nebulous light, like the gleaming white 
of the aurora borealis. The ravine was profound- 
ly dark and silent, and our voices sounded with 
singular clearness in the crisp air. We were in- 
stinctively drawn nearer to our companions by the 
knowledge of our loneliness, like castaways on 
an ocean, and the men who had been utter stran- 
gers to each other six weeks before were united 



AN UNBEATEN TEAIL. 61 

as closely as brothers. Suddenly a wild, despair- 
ing, horrible clamor broke the silence of the canon, 
and was repeated thrice in muffled echoes from 
the sandstone cliffs. Our conversation abruptly 
ceased, and we — or those of us to whom this far 
western life was new — listened in dreadful sus- 
pense. The mules rushed past us, with dilating 
eyes and ears erect. A second time the cry, loud 
and demoniac as the glee of an escaped madman, 
awoke the ringing echoes. " Coyotes," some one 
suggested, and it was these mongrel wolves that 
made this dismal chorus in their revels over the 
carcass of the dead bear. Many a night afterward 
they stole about the outskirts of our camp, and 
disturbed us with their devil-like howling. Alone 
they do not often venture to attack a man, but in 
large numbers, and especially when led by a 
white wolf, they are dangerous company. Their 
bark is curiously deceptive, and sometimes when 
we were startled by an outcry that seemed to 
come from a pack of wolves, we looked back to 
see two or three mean little coyotes trotting away, 
with a hang-dog confession of cowardice in their 
bushy tails. 

The coyote has been amusingly described by 
Dr. Eliot Coues, who in occupying himself as a 
naturalist deprives America of a genuine humor- 
ist. 

" The barking wolf or coyote," Dr. Coues says, 
" is by far the most abundant carnivorous animal 



62 A- SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

in almost every part of the West. Practically it is 
a nuisance ; theoretically it compels a certain de- 
gree of admiration by its irrepressible positivity 
of character and its versatile nature. If its genius 
has nothing essentially noble or lofty about it, few 
animals possess so many and so various attributes, 
or act them out with such dogged perseverance. 
Ever on the alert, and keenly alive to a sense of 
danger, it yet exhibits the coolest effrontery when 
its path crosses ours. The main object of its life 
seems to be the satisfying of a hunger which is 
always craving, and to this aim all its cunning, 
impudence, and audacity are mainly directed. 

"Much has been written concerning the poly- 
glot serenades of the coyote, by those who have 
been unwilling listeners, but it is difficult to con- 
vey an adequate idea in words of the noisy con- 
fusion. One must have spent an hour or two 
vainly trying - + o sleep before he is in condition 
to appreciate the full force of the annoyance. 
It is a singular fact that the howling of two or 
three gives an impression that a score are en- 
gaged, so many, so long drawn are the notes, and 
so uninterruptedly are they continued by one in- 
dividual after another. A short sharp bark is 
sounded, followed by several more in quick suc- 
cession, the time growing faster and the pitch 
higher, till they run together into a long-drawn 
lugubrious howl, in the highest possible key. The 
same strain is taken up again and again by differ- 



AN UNBEATEN TKAIL. 63 

ent members of the pack, while from a greater 
distance, the deep melancholy baying of the more 
wary ones breaks in to add to the discord, till 
the very leaves of the trees seem quivering to the 
inharmonious sounds. It is not true, as asserted by 
some, that the coyotes howl only just after dark 
and at daylight. Though they may be noisiest 
at these times, when the pack is gathering for a 
night's foraging, or dispersing again to their dis- 
mal retreats, I know that they give tongue at any 
time during the night. They are rarely if ever 
heard in daytime, though frequently to be seen, 
at least in secluded regions. Ordinarily, however, 
they spend the day in quiet, out-of-the-way places, 
among rocks, in thick copses, etc., and seek their 
prey mainly by night, collecting for this purpose 
into packs as already noticed. 

" The coyote, although a carnivore, is a very 
indiscriminate feeder, and nothing ^eems to come 
amiss which is capable of being chewed and swal- 
lowed. From the nature of the region it inhabits, 
it is often hard-pressed for food, particularly in 
the winter season. Besides such live game as it 
can surprise and kill, or overpower by persever- 
ing pursuit and force of numbers, it feeds greedi- 
ly on all sorts of dead animal matter. To procure 
this, it resorts in great numbers to the vicinity of 
settlements, where oifal is sure to be found, and 
surrounds the hunter's camp at night. It is well 
known to follow for days in the trail of a travel- 



64 A-SADDLE IN TOE WILD WEST. 

ing party, and each morning just after camp is 
broken it rushes in to claim whatever eatable re- 
fuse may have been left behind. But it can not 
always find a sufficiency of animal food, and is thus 
made frugivorous and herbivorous. Particularly 
in the fall it feeds extensively upon the juicy, soft 
scarlet fruit of various species of prickly pear, 
and in the winter upon berries of various sorts, 
particularly those of the juniper and others. 

" Coyotes are so very annoying that a variety 
of means are used to destroy them. They may be 
shot, of course, but to hunt them in the daytime 
is uncertain, and hardly worth the trouble, while 
night shooting is still more laborious and unsatis- 
factory. Their cunning, inquiring disposition is 
ordinarily more than a match for man's ingenuity 
in the way of traps. The most certain, as well as 
the easiest method of obtaining them is by poison- 
ing the carcass of a dead animal or butcher's offal 
with strychnine. There is no doubt also that the 
odor of asaf cetida is attractive to them, and a little 
of this drug rubbed into the poisoned meat great- 
ly heightens the chances of their eating it. Since 
after eating the poison they suffer greatly from 
thirst, it is well to place a tub of water conve- 
niently at hand, which generally keeps them from 
making off for water, and so being lost." 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN EANGE. 65 
CHAPTER V. 

M0UNTAINEEKING IN THE SAN JUAN EANGE. 

A Difficult March— The Startling Features of a Mountain 
Marsh— Our Topographer's Deer — A Camp in Utter Soli- 
tude — Adventure as a Monomania — The Snow Flowers 
of an Alpine Lake — On the Top of Banded Peak — Two 
Hundred Miles at a Glance — Mr. Clark's Peril — Head 
First Down a Canon. 

Feom the station at the forks of the river an ex- 
cursion was made to some of the highest peaks in 
the San Juan range. Our route lay up the western 
branch of the canon, between the high embank- 
ments before alluded to, which were so regular that 
they seemed the work of artifice rather than of na- 
ture, and resembled the deep cuttings of an English 
railway more than anything else. A narrow bed 
of shining pebbles and sand, with a noisy stream 
foaming in the center, divided them for the dis- 
tance of a mile, beyond which they expanded into 
a beautiful valley, with a shady border of swarm- 
ing fir and pine, and overhanging cliffs of carmine 
sandstone. 

Farther on they almost interlocked each oth- 
er again, and became so steep that our animals 
could no longer find a secure foothold on them, 
in consequence of which we were compelled to 
5 



66 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

make a circuit of several miles through a close- 
ly packed forest and by the borders of a marsh 
before we again reached a clearing. In places the 
mountain torrents had washed a rough channel 
nine feet deep in the earth, and great lifeless trees, 
with their long-armed roots dissevered, were piled 
in confusion across our path. 

Something opposed us at every step. At one 
moment we were netted in a thick growth of 
shrubs, the elastic branches of which switched 
our faces like a birch rod, and the next moment 
our nerves were disturbed by the unpleasant sen- 
sation of the mules sinking from under us in a 
bog. There is no telling a Western marsh. 
The ground before you appears as firm as rock 
itself, and there is nothing to indicate or excite 
the least suspicion of its treacherous character. 
Your mule quakes and snorts, and before you 
are well aware of what has happened, he has, 
with good luck, dragged himself through the 
mire, and stands, quivering in every muscle, on 
solid ground again. 

But these were minor difficulties, and if there 
be a mountaineer among my readers, he will think 
such commonplace matters too trivial for notice. 
In truth, the real hard work of the day had not 
begun, although noon found us toiling toward the 
end of our eighth mile. The sierras ahead of us, 
viewed from the high ground in the rear of our 
camp, looked scarcely more than a mile or two 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 67 

distant, so delusively clear was the atmosphere, 
and now they seemed to be as far away as ever — 
far away, yet near ; so near that it seemed possi- 
ble for an outstretched arm to reach them. Their 
heights of stratified rock overshadowed the shady 
green foothills and the red-lipped cliffs. The 
floods of sunshine pouring down" upon them soft- 
ened their asperities and warmed the beautiful 
mauve color and lustrous snowfields of the peaks. 

Anon we came to a halt for the purpose of 
deliberating on our farther progress. The right 
bank suddenly twisted itself inward, and com- 
pressed the canon to half its former width. On 
one side we were obstructed by a bluff, almost 
precipitous, and completely netted by a most pro- 
lific growth of cotton woods; on the other side by 
a great sandstone cliff, eight or nine hundred feet 
high, with a projecting shelf overhanging the 
river that rushed through these narrows with 
overwhelming impetuosity. It was impo sible to 
drive the pack animals through the cottonwoods, 
and though a mule is capable of any ordinary feat 
of agility, it is not equal to the task of walking 
the sheer walls of a cliff. The current of the 
river was deep and strong, the bottom a pitfall 
of slippery rocks, and wherever a little soil had 
drifted, a swarm of small trees crowded off ev- 
ery other thing. 

But the river was our only way out of the 
net, and, trusting to luck, we splashed into the 



68 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

giddy rapids. At one moment our animals 
plunged up to the shoulders in the fierce tumult 
of waters ; the next moment they staggered as 
if about to fall, with their hoofs caught between 
two ledges of rock ; the next they were secure 
on a shoal ; and so, with alternations of excite- 
ment and confidence, we reached a low embank- 
ment, steep, and thick with cottonwoods, but 
passable for a short distance. The cliff at the 
gateway of the upper canon receded from the 
river, and, acquiring greater height, ended in a 
line of lucid peaks, which effectually inclosed the 
canon on one side with a wall about two thousand 
feet high, unbroken, except at the foot, where 
i here was a wave of low hills. About four miles 
;bove, another range e~ Prided from this, and 
guarded the river with a varied and beautiful 
series of pinnacles and domes, barren, and hoary 
with snow also ; and to the left of these again, 
on the right bank of the river, several yet higher 
and more graceful peaks rose with clearly de- 
fined outlines against the sky that they seemed 
to pierce. 

Lieutenant Morrison, Mr. Clark, and the 
writer Went on in advance of the packers, and a 
sudden turn in the bush showed us, not more than 
twenty yards away, a beautiful deer, which was 
browsing with its broadside toward us. " It's my 
birthday ; I'm always in luck on my birthday," 
whispered Clark as he quickly dismounted, un- 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 69 

strapped his carbine from his saddle, and took a 
long steady aim. For three weeks our mess had 
been without fresh meat, excepting the bear's, and 
we already seemed to smell the savory steam of 
venison cutlets. Clark fired, and a second later 
the deer bounded into the thicket uninjured. He 
intently regarded the breech of his gun. "It's 
out of order ; I must have it fixed," he said with 
delicious equanimity, as he remounted his animal ; 
and we were charitable enough to believe that 
something was the matter with it. 

Starting in the morning from an elevation of 
about 8,000 feet, where the air was warm even to 
sultriness, we had muffled ourselves in three suits 
of winter underclothing, and a keen wind sweep- 
ing through the gr.iplj'i proved the wisdom of 
our precaution early in the afternoon. Not only 
was the air cold ; the sentiment and* color of the 
scene were bleak also. Here, in contrast with th< 
deep coloring of the cliffs, the heavy gloom and 
massive foliage of the undulating hills at the head 
waters of the east branch, the mountains were 
bare, and as pinnacled as icebergs, and as pol- 
ished as the track of a glacier. The snow lay in 
rings on their summits like a fringe of ermine, and 
down the face of a kingly cliff, apparently shel- 
tered from the sun in a deep fissure, was a ribbon 
of the same fleecy white. The hue of the rocks 
alternated between gray and a delicate shade of 
mauve, darkening in the recesses to purple. Over- 



70 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

head the sky was a perfect blue. The opposite 
wall of the canon rose from high cottonwood 
bluffs, extending into high table-lands, and ser- 
rated by another battlement of snowy peaks. 
The form of every object was marvelously dis- 
tinct in the rarefied air, and stood out from the 
rest in clear relief, with the chilly sentiment of a 
marble statue about it ; and our eyes searched in 
vain for a bit of warm color or a manifestation 
of nature's softer mien. 

We picked our way on either side of the 
stream as opportunity offered, crossing from the 
right to the left by turns, climbing and descend- 
ing cliffs by thread-like paths, cutting a passage 
through tangles of cottonwood, now trusting to 
the bed of the river or following its rim of loose 
rocks, and then running in a semicircle over the 
table-lands to avoid some insuperable obstacle in 
the ravine below. We had been on the march 
ten hours, and the sun bent nearer the obdurate 
peaks of gray as if to salute them ; the ridges 
burned scarlet, and the snowfields and all things 
were swept by a rosy glow. But the glory was 
evanescent, and, passing away, it left the canon 
colder and whiter than ever. We made camp on 
a bit of level ground near the turning of the 
stream to the south, with barricades of rock on 
four sides, and innumerable peaks drawn in a zig- 
zag line on the sky. Not the faintest sound broke 
the utter solitude — neither the flap of a wing, the 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 71 

cry of beast, the rustle of the cottonwood, nor the 
clamor of the swollen river. A mighty waterfall 
pouring for a thousand feet down the vertical 
front of a cliff in a continuous line of white, so 
smooth in its motion that it was scarcely dis- 
tinguished from snow, and a rougher torrent leap- 
ing over a high ledge into a chasm, were alone 
heard in a low ringing sound, like the dying vi- 
brations of a bell. All else was silent and mo- 
tionless ; and as the sky was transmuted to a dark 
blue, as the stars, gaining luster with the advanc- 
ing night, shone on the frigid peaks and edged 
them with light, as the gloom and iciness worked 
upon us with depressing influence, we better un- 
derstood the melancholy that Mr. Ruskin at- 
tributes to all mountain scenery. 

Among the members of the expedition was a 
young man from one of the Middle Sfates, a fresh 
graduate of Georgetown College, who was des- 
tined for the profession of law. He was bright, 
generous, and amiable ; but his great ambition was 
to write thrilling letters, depicting the perils of our 
life, to his friends at home, and he rode along from 
day to day plotting horrors that might by some 
disastrous mischance befall us. When our ra- 
tions were reduced to dry bread and coffee, he 
smiled with diabolic complacency — a willing sac- 
rifice hinjself, on account of the compensation he 
derived from the materials our sufferings afforded 
him. He was not satisfied with swallowing mud 



72 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

for water ; he had a secret wish that we might 
all be prostrated by thirst, and opportunely res- 
cued a few seconds before the minute when help 
would be too late. He pined and lost his appetite 
if there were no rattlesnakes near camp, and he 
was overjoyed when one morning he found a 
deadly centipede in his bed. I believe a chasm 
was never safely passed that a pang did not en- 
ter his heart — not that he would have rejoiced 
over a brother's broken neck, for he was a sensi- 
tive and sympathetic fellow in most concerns, but 
he was as sorry when we escaped a catastrophe as 
he would have been had we suffered it. His ma- 
nia was for abundant discomforts and "hair's- 
breadth 'scapes," such as are nowhere so common 
as in the daily newspapers ; and I have no doubt 
that he framed, if he did not write, the words of 
many an imaginary dispatch to the Associated 
Press describing how the whole expedition tum- 
bled over a precipice, and bounced from rock to 
rock for a distance of several thousand feet, "nar- 
rowly escaping fatal injuries." 

He did not accompany us on this side trip to 
the San Juan range, or he might have curdled the 
blood — a mysterious process discovered by some 
astute story writer since the time of Mr. Harvey 
— of his little audience at home. Our limbs were 
all sound in the end, but we had a surprising 
number of little accidents and inconveniences, 
which must have excited his imagination to the 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 73 

point at which authorship of a dime novel is pos- 
sible. 

After a sound sleep in the frosty open air, we 
started early next morning through a gorge some 
distance to the left of the greater cataract, reach- 
ing from the level to the summit of the cliff under 
the shelter of which we had rested during the 
night. The lower part was at an angle of repose, 
and was roughly paved with detritus, but the 
upper part was a mere crevice in the cliff, reveal- 
ing the bare sides of the mountain. We succeed- 
ed very well, however, until we were within a 
few hundred feet of the top, when we encountered 
a vast quantity of ice and snow, which compelled 
us to unload the mules and carry the packs by hand 
— a task which occupied us four hours. The first 
bench reached, * we found a wild-looking valley 
undulating before us, with a dense undergrowth, 
and wide marshes wavy with tall blades of emer- 
ald grass swaying in the wind. A little farther 
on we saw ourselves reflected on the clear surface 
of a blue lake, separated from another circle of 
crystal water by a narrow isthmus, and dotted on 
its borders by a variety of wild flowers, which 
spread their gay ranks forward until they were 
tipped by the ripples, and backward until their 
pliant little stems were seen sprouting out of the 
snow, as If that crusted mass of icy white yielded 
them their miracles of lovely color. One pretty 
little thing we christened the nun-flower, because 



74 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

of its sweet, modest colors — a ring of rich brown 
near the stamen, and lavender fading into white 
near the edge. 

Farther on still, we regained solid footing on 
some cropping rock extending to the base of 
another cliff, about four hundred feet above us, 
the ascent of which was made by a trail over 
loose rocks tramped into shape by game — a nar- 
row, dangerous trail, but the only one that we 
could follow. And here again a large bed of 
snow stood in our way, varying in depth from a 
few inches to twenty feet, with a brittle surface 
of ice, over which the mules labored painfully. 
The summit was rounded into another basin, set 
with several more lakes, bordered by light green 
marsh grass, and so smooth and wonderfully clear 
that the rock-ribs of the valley and the sky and 
mountain-tops seemed repeated in their depths. 
Snow lay everywhere, prismatic in the sunshine, 
and melting as the day warmed into hundreds of 
tiny rivulets. But we were still between high 
walls, with a few sharp pinnacles above us, and 
no extended view of the surrounding country. 
We climbed a hill on which not a grain of sand 
or soil could be seen, and from the top of this we 
went along a saddle of rock to camp under the 
protection of a rising peak. But we had scarcely 
unpacked the mules when the wind changed, and 
beat against us with pitiless violence during the' 
rest of the night. And thus ended our second 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 75 

day of mountaineering in the San Juan range.. 
Yfe had made four miles in eleven hours of con- 
tinuously laborious travel, which fact is the best 
criterion of the difficulties of the route. 

On the next day we attained by some perilous 
climbing a truncated cone of rock, about thirty 
feet in diameter, without a bit of moss, a blade of 
grass, or a shrub on its plainly marked stratifica- 
tion. And this was the summit of Banded Peak, 
13,500 feet above the level of the sea, rising 
among a multitude of other peaks so close to- 
gether and numerous that Lieutenant Morrison 
well compared them to the pipes of a great organ. 
In the far south was Mount Taylor, 158 miles away, 
in New Mexico ; in the west, the Chasca range, 
on the borders of Arizona ; in the north and east, 
Sierra Blanca, Baldy, and the Sangre del Cristo, 
near Fort Garland ; in every direction clusters of 
pointed rock, row after row of peaks, thrust defi- 
antly above the clouds to the heavens. In the 
same magnificent reach we could trace the Navajo, 
the Chama, and the Los Pinos, gathering their 
head waters from the lakes in the basins around 
Banded Peak, and winding all a-glitter through 
the blue and white mazes of ravines and cataracts. 
The wind blustered about us as though it would 
drive us over the ledge, and several ptarmigan 
tamely approached us, and hopped aside in utter 
bewilderment when we threw some stones at them, 
so unused were they to the sight of man. 






76 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

The nearer objects in the sublime outlook ap- 
peared to be so very near, and the farther objects 
so very far, that we could easily imagine that it 
was not an area of 200 miles we gazed down 
upon, but the world itself. And a cheerless, tu- 
multuous, grief-stricken world it seemed to be — 
the sky a frosty blue, the adjacent rocks purple in 
the shadow, gray or mauve in the light, and the 
lowlands confused blots of brown and heavy 
green. Even these colors were subdued in the 
distance to a dull yellow spread over the swelling 
plains, from which the precipices were exalted as 
out of a shipless sea. 

But this was in the flood light of the after- 
noon, and as the brisk wind swept up some clouds 
in the west, the whole scene was changed. The 
mountains were wrapped in the folds of a mist of 
the purest white, and their outlines loomed upon 
us in vapory phantoms. The clouds were rent 
into columns of gray, and instead of looking 
down on to the chaotic upheaval of a continent, 
it was as though we were on the verge of a fairy- 
land. And when the sun burst through the 
storm, the rocks streamed with moisture, which, 
reflecting the brazen light, gave them the appear- 
ance of having a glittering armor of burnished 
silver, and a gorgeous rainbow spread its tri- 
umphal arch across the sky, while all the lowlands 
were vague and moist under the masses of cloud 
that drifted far below us. 



MOUNTAINEERING IN THE SAN JUAN RANGE. 77 

After taking a series of observations with the 
gradientor, aneroid, and barometer, we made a 
record of our visit, and placed it in a tin tube 
under a cairn or monument, for the information 
of future explorers — a custom invariably adopted 
by the Wheeler expedition. The two packers 
and the animals had been left at the camp of the 
previous day, and we now prepared to rejoin 
them by what appeared to be a shorter path than 
that by which we ascended. We climbed down a 
perilous cliff on to a narrow terrace of rock, and 
then, to our dismay, we found that we had over- 
looked a field of ice and snow lying at as acute an 
angle as possible on the face of the mountain for 
a distance of several hundred feet. 

We tried to retrace our way and regain the 
summit, but we could not scale the cliff without 
endangering our lives, and the only feasible plan 
that suggested itself was to cut a series of steps 
in the snow. We stood cogitating at the brink 
of the blinding white sheet, undecided as to 
which course to take, when Mr. Clark incautiously 
stamped his heels on the edge to try its brittle- 
ness. His foot slipped from under him, and the 
next moment we were thrilled by seeing him slid- 
ing down the mountain with the velocity of a 
flash of light. He was in a sitting posture, his 
hair was blown back, and his hat slowly rolled 
down after him. At the bottom of the slope was 
a narrow gutter, leading up from which was an- 



78 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

other snow-bank. If the impetus of the descent 
had been great enough to force him up this, he 
would have been shot into a deep chasm. But he 
carried a spiked tripod, which made an excellent 
alpenstock, and with fine presence of mind he 
plunged this into the snow between his legs, slid 
half way up it, and suddenly came to a stop. 
He felt himself with his hands, in a dazed man- 
ner, as though he was under the impression that 
he had left something behind — which he had 
done ; the same thing, in fact, that hushes Tat- 
ters's voice when the Shaughraun announces in 
the play that the Fenian's refuge is discovered ; 
in short, " the sate of a man's breeches." 

The rest of the way was passed in safety, and 
the following day we joined the main camp at the 
forks of the Chama. 

I ventured to return ahead of my companions, 
and soon lost the trail. About two o'clock in the 
afternoon I stood on the river-bottom, with a 
shoal of quicksand before me, and two very steep 
and high embankments on either hand. I had to 
avoid the quicksands of course ; but the embank- 
ments were nearly perpendicular and covered with 
a thick grass that had already worn the sides of 
my boots to the smoothness of glass. I could not 
stand, so slippery was the surface, much less lead 
my animal ; and after many vain endeavors I de- 
cided to mount her. I succeeded after a great 
deal of stumbling in getting half way up the em- 



ISSUE DAY AT AN INDIAN AGENCY. 79 

bankment, when, alas ! the lateral strain broke 
the saddle-girth, and I rolled like a log toward the 
bottom of the canon. Down I went fifty feet or 
more, my cartridges, eyeglasses, and a haunch of 
venison following, until I was caught in the mid- 
riff by a providential bowlder. I looked up the 
slope for the mule, and she patiently stood where 
I had so unexpectedly left her, looking down 
upon me with a mutely sympathetic glance. Luck- 
ily I was not seriously hurt ; and after taking my 
boots off, reached the top without further diffi- 
culty. 



CHAPTER VI. 



ISSUE DAY AT AN INDIAN AGENpY. 

The Trader's Store at Tierra Amarilla — A Gathering of Utes, 
Navajos, and Apaches — The Subordination of Women — 
The Beauty of the Young Squaws — How Arrows are 
Poisoned — The Tribulations of an Indian Agent. 

Ten miles south of the Forks of the Chama, 
across the New Mexican boundary line, we traveled 
over a low-lying plateau, realizing in all its fea- 
tures the cultivated and orderly magnificence of 
an English park, with the difference that for oaks 
there were pines — pines that matched the oaks in 
size, age, strength, and stateliness ; not packed 
together densely, but towering to a height of eighty 






80 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

or a hundred feet at even intervals, with a clear 
space wide enough to allow a carriage to pass be- 
tween them. Nor was the regularity with which 
these superb trees were set the only point of their 
resemblance to the woodlands of the old country. 
The ground was perfectly level except where a 
little knoll broke its monotony, and covered with 
a short, thick, smooth carpet of grass, that only 
needed a little care, a little rolling and clipping, 
to make it as lustrous and elastic as the baronial 
lawns of England. In places an opening occurred, 
in which, as if to complete the picture of pastoral 
order and culture, great flocks of sheep were graz- 
ing, attended by dirtily picturesque half-breeds 
and Mexicans. 

A few miles beyond we reached Tierra Ama- 
rilla, another Mexican town duplicating all the 
features of Conejos, and here we pitched our tents 
for several days. We had not received a mail for 
some weeks, nor spoken to a soul outside our own 
party ; and though Tierra Amarilla is suicidally 
vacuous as a residence, it was to us a potential 
Paris in the wilderness. The porch outside the 
trader's store was crowded with Mexicans, chatter- 
ing Spanish and smoking cigaritas. A few In- 
dians crouched inside, looking at us and criticising 
our dress. While the trader was selecting our 
letters, I noticed a very big straw hat on the count- 
er with a very small pair of legs sitting under it. 
The legs dangled against the boards, and presently 



ISSUE DAY AT AN INDIAN AGENCY. 81 

I was aware of a boy's voice under the hat which 
directed itself to me. 

" Do you belong to the Wheeler expedition ? " 

"Yes." 

" And have you been in the mountains ? " 

"Yes." 

" I guess you come from the East too ? " 

"Yes." 

" Ah," continued the treble voice pathetically, 
" you must find life very different out here from 
what it is there. I do. I came from Indianapolis. 
It's a big place that. And, I say, wouldn't you 
like to see a nice frame house and some big trees, 
and to have some peaches ? Ah," he went on, 
without waiting for an answer, " I would. And 
some white boys to play with. There ain't any 
white boys here ; they are all greysers, and we 
don't call them white because they are brown. 
They swear and chew, and don't know how to play 
soldiers. Oh, it's very different here from what it 
is in Indianapolis ! " 

He was silent for a moment as he dreamed of 
the charms of Indianapolis, and in the mean time 
one of the Indians arose from his squatting posi- 
tion on the floor and shuffled out with a blanket 
wrapped around his loins. " He doesn't look like 
Osceola or King Philip, does he ? " the small boy 
resumed in a contemptuous tone ; and then he 
added : " You'll see plenty of Indians on Saturday ; 
that's issue day, and I'm the Indian agent's son." 
6 



A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

The agency was a long one-storied adobe house, 
whitewashed, with a wide portico running around 
it, and built in a hollow square. On Saturday 
(he small boy came to camp for us, and provided us 
with chairs in the courtyard. Two butchers were 
cutting up five enormous beeves, and a storeroom 
was filled from the floor to the ceiling with sacks 
of flour, kegs of gunpowder, and bags of shot. 
The day was dazzling, and soon after nine o'clock 
the beneficiaries of the occasion came from the 
neighboring encampment in a constant stream. 
They had donned the garb of festivity, and were 
weighted with rainbow-colored blankets, feathers, 
bead-work, and flashing silver ornaments. All 
were mounted on ponies, and all carried great leafy 
branches of trees to protect their heads from the 
sun. In some instances a whole family was mount- 
ed on one horse, the chief in the saddle, with a 
little boy in front of him, and the squaw behind, 
with a papoose strapped to her back. In other 
instances each member of the family had a sepa- 
rate animal, and the chief led, with his wife and 
children following in a string. Every face was 
painted with vermilion on the cheek, on the fore- 
head, or around the lids of the eye, the last pro- 
ducing a most diabolical effect. 

The young squaws wore shawls of red and 
other bright colors, necklaces of beads, heavy 
earrings, and belts of silver lozenges. But those 
who were no longer pretty fell behind in rags 



ISSUE DAY AT AN INDIAN AGENCY. 83 

and misery. The chiefs were wrapped up in blan- 
kets, although the day was very hot, and many 
of them wore felt hats of obsolete pattern. They 
were armed with shot-guns, revolvers of old-fash- 
ioned make, bows and steel-headed arrows. 

The method of poisoning the arrows, as it was 
explained to us at the agency, is peculiar. The 
Indians take the robe of a freshly killed buffalo, 
antelope, or deer, with a coat of fat clinging to it ; 
and having previously gathered several rattle- 
snakes, they goad the reptiles with a sharpened 
stick to strike at it. An arrow head dipped first in 
water and then in the robe stung by the snakes is 
poisonous even when the fat is completely dry and 
months old. The liver of animals is used in the 
same manner, and according to frontiersmen, the 
moment it is struck by the snake it changes from 
its natural color to a bright green. 

The Indians came into the courtyard more nu- 
merously than ever. There were Utes, Apaches, 
and Navajos. The Utes and Apaches can scarcely 
be distinguished from one another. They are both 
marked by aquiline noses, small eyes, a dull cop- 
per complexion, and a treacherous expression. 
The Navajos, on the contrary, have a rich brown 
complexion, large beautiful eyes, very broad shoul- 
ders, and a frank, happy, intelligent look that is 
very winsome. Their dress is a short tunic of 
some fancy cotton print and breeches of the same 
material, with black socks and buckskin mocca- 



84 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

sins. While the agency was properly that of the 
Utes and Apaches, the Navajos also had claims for 
rations. When the tribes had halted their horses 
in the corral, the women came and sat under the 
portico, while the men sauntered through the yard 
smoking vile tobacco in corn-cobs. An apparently 
better -natured assemblage could not easily be 
found, and one thing especially noticeable was the 
tender care of the mothers for their chubby, big- 
headed, naked babies. But as soon as the issue 
began the greed and dishonesty of the people 
were brought into stronger light than their good 
nat ure had been before. 

" They try every imaginable trick to get a 
double allowance," said the Indian agent to me 
as he marshaled the squaws in line, " and they 
occasionally succeed." 

When the women had been put in order, he 
passed down the line and gave to each of them 
a small ticket entitling her to ten pounds of 
beef for every member of her family. Then he 
passed down the line again and gave to each 
another ticket, entitling her to ten pounds of 
flour ; but the moment he had finished his 
rounds, he was besieged by a frantic crowd vow- 
ing that they had not received tickets, although 
they had just come out of the line. The chiefs 
came to the support of their squaws, and in- 
creased the clamor. Some of the women ac- 
tually had tickets in their hands while they were 



ISSUE DAY AT AN INDIAN AGENCY. 85 

flatly protesting that they had received none; and 
seven small children who had been seated with 
their mothers five minutes before, were brought 
forward as the orphans of the tribe, with a de- 
mand for special rations. The agent was brow- 
beaten and confused, until he refused to issue a 
single ticket more ; and the women finding their 
entreaties unavailing, then rushed off to the store- 
house to obtain their food in exchange for their 
orders. The beef was passed to them through a 
small window about four feet from the ground, in 
enormous joints, so heavy that occasionally a poor 
squaw could not tackle her share, and, when she 
attempted to carry it off, let it fall, to the vast 
amusement of the chiefs. The men never offered 
the least assistance, and the women struggled 
across the courtyard with their heavy loads and 
packed them upon the horses. 

After the flour and beef had been distributed, 
small quantities of tea and coffee were given to 
the old men and women, and the chiefs were sup- 
plied with powder and shot. There were many 
ludicrous scenes, and many little quarrels. No 
one was satisfied, although every one had been 
treated with the greatest fairness. By noon most 
of them had received their supplies and gone home 
to their wigwams. A few remained to haggle 
with the agent, and others loafed outside the 
courtyard, or, seated in the middle of the street, 
gambled their rations away with the Mexicans. 



86 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

As we started to go to camp, the small boy, 
who had been absent for some time, came run- 
ning after us. " Good-by," he said. " I have 
been having a splendid time; two Americans have 
just come from Denver, and we have been play- 
ing soldiers ever since I left you. It's high ! " he 
added, in the vernacular of Indianapolis, as he 
hastened back to the martial amateurs. 

The next day was the Fourth of July, and 
when we awoke in camp, each man fired a shot 
from his revolver, and one flew a patriotic pocket 
handkerchief from his tent. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 

A Prospect of Suffering — A Counterpart of the Yellowstone — 
The Cities Wrought by Rain — On the Summit of the Con- 
tinental Divide — The Rock Fantasies of the Canon Blanco 
— A Region without Water and without Vegetation — 
The Extinct Races of New Mexico and their Ruins — The 
Wonders of Pueblo Pintado. 

We left Tierra Amarilla to enter a section of 
Arizona and the northwest corner of New Mexico, 
reputed to be so wild, desolate, and unknown that 
our undertaking was threatened with the chance 
of many privations and no little peril. We were 
advised to fill our canteens and trust in Providence 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 87 

at the start, and were told that we would not find 
any running streams in a distance of ninety miles; 
that the only water would be found in springs far 
apart, and pools formed by rain. The prospect 
was not encouraging. Parts of the territory had 
never been explored before, and the remainder 
was known only to a few cattle-herders and In- 
dians. It was a treacherous country moreover, 
with many quicksands and marshes, in which the 
horses might suddenly sink too deep to be recov- 
ered. A skirmish with marauding Utes in the 
Washington Pass was also counted among the 
possibilities, and our food supplies were limited 
to twenty-one days, the shortest time in which the 
journey could be made. 

With little in our favor and much against 
us, we started out. Soon after leaving the town 
we entered the desert — a region of high table- 
lands, mesas in the Spanish, from 7,000 to 10,000 
feet above the level of the sea, by which the 
country for miles is divided into deep channels, 
like the dry courses of a stream winding among 
innumerable islands. These mesas are not like 
mountains except in height. They rise 400 or 
500 feet from the plain by a precipitous slope 
of rock and sand, fostering forests of dwarf 
pine and fir, above which is a distinct belt of 
sandstone strata reaching to the summit. But 
their summits, instead of having the craggy for- 
mation of a mountain, roll off into table-lands, 



88 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

heavily timbered and occasionally marshy. As 
we stand in one of the canons that divide them, 
some of them resemble great iron-clads, with pro- 
jecting rams at the bows, and are oblong in 
shape ; others are in the form of rotundas, the 
same height from the plain all around; and others 
again rise from the level by an easy slope, ending 
in a superb bluff several hundred feet high. They 
are one of the most curious features of Western 
scenery, and are more impressive than many high- 
er forms. The sandstone strata is miraculously 
varied in color. Sometimes it is a decided yel» 
low, with a vein of blood-red running through it; 
sometimes a metallic dark green, like bronze ; 
and sometimes a faint shade of blue. Both strong 
chemical hues and mild intermediate tints abound, 
and are equally bewildering in their intensity 
and delicacy. The constitution of the mesas is 
not less remarkable than their color. Usually 
they comprise the ordinary successive layers of 
rock, but in some instances the walls are built as 
by hand, of small rectangular blocks laid as me- 
thodically as the bricks of a house. A common- 
er formation consists of large square slabs, two 
or three inches in thickness, and thin, slate-like 
sheets, rough on the edge. 

About ten miles from Tierra Amarilla we 
crossed a portion of the level paved with square 
blocks of water-deposit sandstone, as evenly and 
apparently with as much design as Broadway is 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTEY. 89 

paved ; and out of the crevices between these 
blocks, growing from them, to all appearances, 
was a thick battalion of pines. At another point 
we saw a mesa with a slanting abutment, at least 
400 feet high, erected with the same precision and 
in the same manner. A photograph or wood-en- 
graving can not give any idea of the wonders of 
the mesas, the peculiarity of which is in their 
profuse color. The surrounding land is an un- 
tilled solitude, with scarce a single attractive fea- 
ture. The soil is either white or yellow, and 
affords slender support to a multitude of sage- 
bushes with bodies gnarled and knotted like the 
children of infirmity, the leaden hue of which 
spreads itself over the plain until it seems to be 
a slowly rising mist. Where the mesas are, the 
pines on the slopes are blots of sombre greenness, 
enlivened by the chromatic belt of sandstone, and 
a crown of fresher vegetation above. The white 
earth, the grayish green of the shrubs, the strange- 
ly variegated and ponderous rocks, together re- 
veal a new phase of nature, for the like of which 
I can only refer the reader to his own imagina- 
tion. Underneath the sage-bushes the purple 
flower of the wild verbena grows — how, in the 
parched soil that seems too sterile for the com- 
monest weeds, is a mystery — and the savage. cac- 
tus, bristling with vindictive thorns, blossoms in 
a flower as tender-looking as a rose-bud. The 
mesas are the work of water acting on friable rock 



& 



90 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

and clay, and their history is to be read in every 
ditch. The composition of the earth is such that 
after a storm it is mapped with vertical fissures 
ready to yield to the next fall of rain, and con- 
stantly enlarging into wide channels, which will 
anon encircle and work out a whole tract of land. 
The smallest drain has stratified walls, sheer from 
the level to the stream, and in some places we 
found a circular basin, dry, yet more verdant than 
the surrounding country, inclosed by the same kind 
of perpendicular walls, varying from three to five 
feet in height. 

Our first day's march from Tierra Amarilla 
was short and comfortable, and we camped for 
the night on the Chama, obtaining some speckled 
trout for supper. But on the second day we trav- 
eled twenty-five miles in order to reach a muddy 
little creek, with water of the color and thickness, 
but without the flavor, of a rich cream. On the 
third day we made nearly twenty-nine miles in a 
heavy storm, through a section equaling, and 
probably surpassing, the famous Yellowstone re- 
gion in its natural wonders. As in the latter val- 
ley, the principal rocks are of mutable sandstone, 
wrought by wind, dust, and rain into forms of in- 
conceivable beauty. There is less of the gro- 
tesque than in the wonder-land of Montana, or in 
Colorado's Garden of the Gods, however ; for Na- 
ture has here wrought the phenomenal without 
running riot. 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 91 

From our camp we ascended a hill belonging 
to a ridge that partly incloses a small valley, walled 
in on the opposite side by white cliffs, ornamented 
with scroll-work as by the chisel of a sculptor. 
The ridge undulates by an easy grade toward the 
middle, where it descends into a wide gap, open- 
ing a vista of mountains beyond ; and in the cen- 
ter of this break a conical peak lifts its head, 
flanked by two smaller elevations of similar shape. 
The earth, where the pines have left it bare, con- 
sists of patches of white and carmine, which, com- 
bined with the color of the cliffs, produce an ex- 
traordinary and very pretty effect. As we crossed 
the valley, the clouds, coursing in ragged shreds, 
fell lower and lower upon the hills, altering their 
outlines beyond recognition, and finally blotting 
them out altogether. But thus far we had only 
arrived at the portals of a city of marvels. 

We followed a trail among great bowlders of 
sandstone on to a plain, the rain falling more 
heavily upon us, and our plodding horses sinking 
up to the knees in mud, until we came to a grove 
of pines, with' dripping and glistening branches ; 
and emerging from that we discovered a scene such 
as John might have dreamed of on Patmos — not 
of abnormal masses of rock tumbled together out 
of unshapely chaos, but the prospect of a fair city 
full of beautiful forms and colors. You can proba- 
bly recall pictures of Italy in which all kinds of 
tints are pervaded by a golden haze that leaves 



92 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

them clear and brilliant, while reducing them to a 
degree of softness and mellowness like the wistful 
bluish-gray of a summer evening's sky. Think, 
then, of such a picture realized with all its subtilty 
of color ; think of an amphitheatre of miraculous 
buildings, fanciful in form, and as fresh-looking as 
polished granite, composed of well-defined belts of 
mauve, violet, yellow, pink, gray, blue, and a score 
of other hues ; think of Constantinople, or some 
other Oriental city, with its shabbiness weeded out, 
and only the palaces with the graceful minarets 
left ; and from these thoughts you may gather an 
idea of the view that was disclosed to us as we came 
out of the pine grove. 

First we saw a pyramid — a form which Nature 
seems especially fond of multiplying — 200 feet 
high ; at its base a shade of violet, which blends 
with an earthy brown that is next in the ribs of 
color surrounding it. Above these a line of car- 
mine extends, melting into a soft rose-color, which 
by almost imperceptible degrees changes to a car- 
mine again, and the apex is only reached by an 
infinite variety of the most astonishing chromatic 
transformations. Next, as we advanced, we saw a 
larger and more complicated structure, two towers 
connected by a wall in front, with an arrow-like 
spire midway between them ; and for miles far- 
ther our interest was sustained by similar and no 
less picturesque rocks, some like crescent-shaped 
fortresses, others pointed and slim as needles, 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 93 

others fairly round like water-batteries, and still 
others with the fretwork arches, the solid abut- 
ments and spires of great Gothic cathedrals. 

In some places the stones have been eroded into 
thousands of little cells, like a worm-eaten piece 
of wood from the tropics ; and occasionally a great 
split opens into a darksome cavern many feet 
deep. One of the strangest things about this 
strange region is its mutability. It is more or less 
changed every year ; the soft clay that coats the 
sandstone is pitted with the prints of a million 
rain-drops, and the water in every little channel 
is as varicolored as the rocks themselves. You 
are amazed at the metamorphoses that a thousand 
years must have wrought, ever weaving fresh 
shapes and obliterating old ones out of this fria- 
ble stone, while the main rocky range that is not 
far away has remained unaltered ancf immovable 
through all the ages. 

Exactly at midday we reached the summit of 
the continental divide, the boundary separating 
the waters that flow into the Pacific from those 
that flow into the Atlantic, and that night we 
made a "dry" camp. It was technically called a 
" dry " camp, because it was far from any spring 
or river, but it was a very wet camp indeed to us. 
The rain that had fallen in torrents ceased as we 
pitched our tents on a sloppy mud bank, on which 
innumerable bear-tracks were imprinted ; and 
toward 8 o'clock the welcome cry of " Supper ! " 



94 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

aroused at least one member of the expedition 
from melancholy reveries on lost comforts. But 
we had scarcely taken our seats at the frail table, 
improvised out of mess-chests, when a loud peal 
of thunder was heard overhead, and the next mo- 
ment the rain came upon us with renewed force, 
driving us into our tents and thoroughly drench- 
ing our food, bedding, and clothing. 

For five days following we had much to dis- 
courage us. Our water was gathered from the 
mud-puddles by the way, and remained as thick 
as gruel after four or five nitrations. The mules 
went thirsty and hungry. Little good grass could 
be found for them, and their backs broke into 
horrible sores in our long marches in search of 
pools. A fresh bone was visible in my mule's 
side for several mornings, and I am afraid to 
think how many ribs the unfortunate animal 
might have developed had we not soon found 
some fair grazing. But we had much to be thank- 
ful for, withal. Lieutenant Morrison's experience 
was of great advantage to us, and saved us from 
many sufferings and delays. We were fortunate, 
too, in striking the rainy season, which is distin- 
guished from the dry season by a shower of about 
thirty minutes' duration every afternoon. 

From the continental divide we traveled west- 
ward to the Canon Blanco, which is inclosed by 
the same kind of rock and pliable clay as that 
which we had already seen in so many uncom- 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 95 

mon forms. A gritty yellow stone, exceedingly 
light in color, is also abundant, and is corroded 
into weird images like those in Monument Park, 
half suggestive of the preternatural and half sug- 
gestive of the preposterous. There is a notable 
tendency in much Western scenery to look like 
something artificial. Nature seems to be ever 
striving to dissemble, and make believe that her 
work is the work of man. In a branch of the 
Canon Blanco we looked down upon a group of 
sandstones with a striking semblance to hand- 
some modern buildings — one, for instance, rising 
by terraces to a cupola, each terrace being sup- 
ported by regular lines of pillars. Next to this a 
crescent of pillars upholds a cornice, adorned by 
fretwork of extreme delicacy ; and farther on a 
mass of stone counterfeits the old building of the 
Chicago Board of Trade. Some of the mesas, too, 
dissimilar from those seen in the earlier part of 
our journey, have bluffs formed by distinct rows 
of semicircular columns, which diminish in size 
from the base to the culminating point, and have 
the appearance of a rich mottled granite. The 
sturdy pines thrust themselves into the remotest 
nooks and corners, and find nutriment where no 
other living thing is seen. 

It is related in an old legend that when the 
work of creation was finished the devil was filled 
with envy, and endeavored to produce another 
earth of his own design. He toiled and toiled 



96 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

with water, fire, and wind, and at last lifted vol- 
canic Iceland, with its fells and jokulls, out of the 
sea. The same legend might be easily adapted 
to the country we explored beyond the Canon 
Blanco, which is so completely desolate that not 
more than twenty whites have ever dared to en- 
ter it. It is a land without water, without game, 
or a single thing to sustain life — a blot on the fair 
earth, an irredeemable waste, indescribably dreary. 
Parts of it consist of alkali flats, without other 
vegetation than the intolerably pertinacious sage- 
brush, and parts of undulating plains, stretching 
monotonously for scores of miles. Hour after 
hour the mules plod through the valleys between 
the low knolls that divide the plains into troughs 
like the hollows of the sea, and hour after hour 
the vision is limited to the dull, gray walls of these 
abominable unvaried basins, which weigh down the 
mind and heart. Other parts consist of lava>-beds, 
black with the crusted froth of extinct craters, and 
rugged with cliffs and caverns. But another part, 
consisting of alkali sand-dunes, is drier, hotter, 
and drearier than the flats or the plains. When 
the sun shines, as it often does with awful fierce- 
ness, the glaring whiteness of the sand almost 
blinds the traveler ; and when the wind blows, 
as it often does with corresponding violence, the 
particles of dust flying in the air almost choke 
him. Sometimes, when a perfect calm prevails, a 
shrieking blast, as loud and harsh as a chorus of 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 97 

wolves, startles you from a reverie, and an instant 
afterward you are in the midst of a terrific whirl- 
wind of sand and pebbles, which are carried 
thousands of feet into the air. I will not under- 
take to enumerate all the curses of this accursed 
country, however. To do so would be a greater 
tax on my Christian patience than my supply of 
that virtue will endure. 

The course of a mean little creek, dignified 
into the name of Rio Chaco, straggles through 
the desert, filled at times with a sluggish mass of 
yellow mud ; and this, with some pools, also 
muddy, afforded us the nearest approach to water 
we found in a march of seven days. 

I have said that the country contains no game 
— that any one who should be lost would starve 
to death ; but I ought not to omit mention of a 
thousand crawling things that infest it. Rattle- 
snakes are numerous enough to make us look care- 
fully before each step ; and a deadly species of 
the centipede, about five inches long and a quarter 
of an inch in diameter — a light, watery-looking 
reptile with black claws — has an aggressive way 
of insinuating itself among the bedding. Once 
in a while a coyote looks at you from behind a 
sage-bush, and runs away. A strange little flesh- 
colored insect, with big black eyes and a mouth 
altogether out of proportion to its other features, 
which the Mexicans* call " Child of the Earth," 
on account of its grotesquely human appearance, 
7 



98 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

is also seen. As for beetles that stand on their 
heads and wave their tails at you ; beetles that 
dissolve themselves into a liquid which they squirt 
at you in their retreat ; lizards large and small, 
swift and slow, plain and variegated in color — 
these are too common to call for notice. 

Yet, all over this region, so worthless and de- 
serted now, positive evidences are found that it was 
once populated by a civilized and numerous race, 
of whom the Pueblo Indians are possibly the de- 
scendants. On the banks of the Chaco, southwest 
of the Canon Blanco, stands a magnificent ruin, 
named Pueblo Pintado, meaning in English 
Painted Town, of which three stories and cellars 
remain in an excellent state of preservation. I 
counted ninety-four separate rooms on the ground- 
floor alone, and there are signs of a fourth and 
possibly a fifth story. The walls measure from 
about one to three feet in breadth, and are built of 
solid blocks of stone, variable in size and hewed 
with the greatest nicety. The minutest crevice 
is filled, like a piece of mosaic work, with bits of 
stone that exactly fit it ; and though little or no 
mortar has been used, this patchwork is as firm 
as a solid piece of rock. The exterior walls are 
formed of two thicknesses of stone, with a filling 
of adobe between, which gives them a breadth of 
nearly four feet, and renders them almost impreg- 
nable. The windows and doors open upon an in- 
terior courtyard, this arrangement evidently being 



THE MIRACULOUS MESA COUNTRY. 99 

part of a general plan of fortification ; and the 
courtyard contains several sunken chambers with 
circular walls marvelously perfect. No savant 
has ever determined positively to what race the 
occupants of this and the numerous similar ruins 
scattered over the country belonged. Neither 
whites nor Indians have any traditions concerning 
them, and only one thing is certain : that, who- 
ever the builders were, they possessed a practical 
knowledge of the art of fortification and archi- 
tecture, an amount of good taste and the means to 
gratify it, that entitle them to a high place in the 
scale of civilization. 

Dr. Oscar Loew, who was attached to Lieuten- 
ant Wheeler's survey, thinks that New Mexico 
occupied a leading place among the few regions 
that were inhabited by civilized people*on the dis- 
covery of this continent. All the Spanish rec- 
ords, though they are sometimes untrustworthy, 
agree as to the existence of a large number of in- 
habited towns in the territory — at least ten times 
the number of the present Pueblos. Some Span- 
ish writers estimate the whole Pueblo population 
to have been fifty thousand ; and the cause of the 
decimation is probably traceable, in the first place, 
to the changes of climate that prompted emigra- 
tion from certain parts of the country ; secondly, 
to the wars with the Spaniards ; and in the third 
place, to a mixture of the Spanish and Indian 
blood. Among the present Pueblos of New Mex- 

LofC. 



100 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

ico there is only one tradition in regard to the 
ruins. It is denied that they were depopulated 
by the Spanish wars, and it is said that the grad- 
ual decrease of the rainfall induced the inhabi- 
tants to emigrate to the south long before the 
Spaniards arrived in the country, being led by 
Montezuma, a powerful man who was born in 
Pecos, and who had settled with the Pueblos 
on the Rio San Juan. Montezuma was to re- 
turn and lead the remaining Pueblos to the south, 
but he failed to come back. The Pueblos had 
been ordered by him to maintain the eternal fire, 
which is part of their religion ; but generation 
after generation looked for him in vain, and now 
the fire is by no means perpetual. ' 

The tradition agrees with another held by the 
Aztecs in Old Mexico when Cortes entered the 
country, namely, that their forefathers came (most 
probably at the end of the twelfth century) from 
the north ; and their description of the country 
given to Cortes answers very well for New Mex- 
ico. Humboldt, without any knowledge of the 
existence of the ruins, supposed that the Aztecs 
came from the same part of North America. 
Some writers erroneously maintain that the Pue- 
blos of New Mexico know nothing about Mon- 
tezuma ; but Dr. Loew asserts, on the contrary, 
that they have worshiped him next to the sun. 

The fact that the Aztecs in Old Mexico had a 
monarchical government, while the Pueblos of 



OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS. 101 

New Mexico are republican, is not considered an 
argument against the theory that the former came 
from New Mexico. The Aztecs might have con- 
fided their government to the family of Montezuma 
from feelings of gratitude or adoration. And the 
fact that the Aztecs in Old Mexico had some cus- 
toms and a style of building different from the 
Pueblos of New Mexico, is not proof against the 
assertion, since the Aztecs on entering Old Mex- 
ico found tribes already there, with whom they 
mixed, and through whom they must have lost 
some of their original characteristics. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS TO FORT WIN- 
GATE. 

Out of the Desert into a Paradise — The Navajo Reservation — 
The Amicability of the Tribe— An Old Chief's Idea of 
Whisky — The Giant's Armchair — Concerning several In- 
teresting Members of the Camp— An Adventure at Albu- 
querque. 

As we came out of the desert a line of moun- 
tains appeared against the horizon, which we 
knew to be the Chaska range. In the distance 
they did not promise much gratification to our 
wearied eyes ; but when we entered them hy the 



102 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

Washington Pass, a break about midway in the 
range, we were satiated with their beauties. The 
foliage is varied and luxuriant. Pines grow to a 
height of eighty feet, and the cottonwood forms 
itself into canopies, beneath the grateful shade of 
which the earth is carpeted with mosses and wild 
flowers in prodigious variety. There are Alpine 
bluebells of the tenderest blue ; roses, red, white, 
and yellow, of the most exquisite fragrance ; large 
buttercups and daisies that might have been waft- 
ed from English meadows ; purple-flowered morn- 
ing-glories ; and a large delicate plant, which 
blossoms in three lavender-colored leaves mottled 
near the end, like the wings of a brown butterfly. 
We went over the foot-hills into the valleys, where 
gigantic bowlders lay wrapped in mosses and ferns, 
and through labyrinths of shrubs and trees, until 
we came to the mouth of the pass. Here we stood 
at the foot of a long, narrow slope of the bright- 
est green grass, traversed by a brook that tum- 
bled over several ledges in its descent. It was a 
natural clearing, with dense forests on each side ; 
and at the head, rising far above the giant pines, 
were two massive rock-towers, one of which we 
christened Mblack's Peak, out of compliment to 
the meteorologist of the party, a son of the Hon. 
William E. Mblack, of Indiana. Following the 
trail up and over the loose stones, we then reached 
a ravine where the foliage was thicker than ever, 
spreading and entangling itself into beautiful 



OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS. 103 

arches and festoons of branch and leaf. A little 
farther on was another clearing locked in by the 
walls of the pass, and in this primitive solitude 
we pitched our tents for the night. 

We were now within the Navajo Indian reser- 
vation, and for several days were visited by many 
chiefs and squaws. The first wigwam we saw was 
built of boughs, twigs, and leaves. Two chiefs 
were taking their ease within on buffalo robes and 
wild-cat skins, while a pretty young squaw was 
busy weaving blankets. The two chiefs arose with 
smiling faces of welcome as we approached, and 
plied us with questions as to our experiences in 
the desert ; but the little squaw scarcely raised 
her eyes, and hummed a strange little song as 
she hammered the wool down into her blanket. 
When the men had obtained some tobacco from 
us, they directed us to a trail ; but we had not 
gone far when we heard the elder one calling 
after us. He soon overtook us, and told us that, 
as he was afraid we could not find water for the 
night's camp, he had decided to conduct us to it. 
In pursuance of his purpose he ran on before us 
out of breath, with beads of perspiration on his 
forehead, which he occasionally dried by taking a 
handful of loose soil and rubbing well over the 
skin. His dress was the same as that of all the 
Navajos, consisting of a cotton tunic gathered at 
the waist by a belt, with a simple leather bag at- 
tached, black cotton drawers, black cotton stock- 



104 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

ings, and yellow buckskin moccasins. His long 
black hair was tied into a cue, and a Turkey-red 
handkerchief was knotted across his brow. His 
face was frank and pleasant ; his shoulders had 
great breadth, and his limbs were as supple as a 
cat's. He brought us to a pool of water, where 
he was joined by several other Indians, who left 
their work in the fields and rushed toward us the 
moment they saw us, remaining with us the whole 
evening, and watching with intense interest the 
work of unpacking the mules, putting up the 
tents, and cooking the supper. We, too, watched 
them with quite as great an interest, for the 
Navajos are dexterous, their consciences dull, and 
portable articles sometimes find their way from 
travelers' outfits into Navajo pockets in a way 
that will not bear explanation. But we lost no- 
thing, and one by one our guests arose from the 
circle they had formed around our camp-fire, and, 
after wishing us good night, went home to their 
huts. 

The Navajos number about eight thousand 
people, and have been for years on good terms 
with the whites. Many of them own farms and 
raise stock. During the time we were in their 
reservation they followed us from day to day, 
crowding about us while we were eating, and 
meddling with anything within their reach. Cu- 
riosity is a quality for which few give Indians 
credit, and the common idea of them is that they 



OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS. 105 

are stoical in disposition. But as a matter of fact 
they are like children in their inquisitiveness, and 
'hey insisted upon a close examination of our per- 
sonal attire, the contents of our mess-chests, our 
arms, and our ammunition, not the smallest article 
escaping their notice. Speaking of this reminds 
me of an exceedingly amiable old chief who thrust 
his beaked nose into everything large enough to 
admit it. One of the men was sick, and went to 
the medicine-chest to get some pills, followed, of 
course, by the Indian. The long rows of little 
canisters and vials gave the old fellow great de- 
light, and he took them in his hand one by one 
and smelled them with a varying expression on 
his face. At last he reached a bottle of con- 
centrated ammonia, put it up to his nose, and in- 
haled heavily. The next moment he rolled over 
as if he had been shot, and for several seconds 
could neither breathe nor sneeze ; presently he re- 
covered himself and shook his head. " No bueno ! 
no bueno ! " he cried in Spanish ; " whisky no bue- 
no ! " and, as he was either tired of our company 
or ashamed of the undignified show he had made 
of himself, he went away, still sneezing, and we 
did not press him to stay. 

We encamped in several Navajo villages 
which have some appearance of permanence. The 
houses are small, conical in shape, and built of 
logs, which are raised like a stack of muskets and 
covered with matting and sods. The squaws 



106 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

are industrious, and occupy themselves in weav- 
ing blankets, which are among the finest and most 
expensive made anywhere. Some of the wool is 
furnished by the Government, but the best white 
wool is made by themselves from their own sheep, 
and the finest red wool is made by picking cloth. 
Two or three hundred dollars each is not an un- 
usual price for the large-sized blankets, which are 
waterproof and wonderfully warm. 

Beyond the Washington Pass we entered Ari- 
zona by the way of Fort Defiance, and traveled 
for three days under the shadow of a line of red 
sandstone bluffs about eight hundred feet high, 
which are split in many places into detached nee- 
dles. Here and there a volcanic mass rises alone 
from the plain, its black and porous substance 
covered with a yellowish-green moss ; and among 
others we found one nearly a thousand feet high, 
to which Mr. Clark gave as a descriptive name 
" The Giant's Arm-chair." We continued to suf- 
fer for want of water, and when we arrived at 
Fort Wingate, several of our pack-mules were in 
so poor a condition that they could not have lived 
had we taken them farther. They were not only 
exhausted from overwork and want of food — a 
few days' rest would have cured them had that 
been all — but most of them were afflicted with 
festering sores worn in their sides by the pack- 
saddles or aparajos. For nearly three weeks 
their average marches had been of about ten 



OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS. 107 

hours' duration under an intensely hot sun each 
day, and during this time the load of each was 
not less than 150 pounds. Without good water 
or sufficient grass, with these heavy weights over 
their wounds, they trotted along briskly until the 
last day of their service, ascending and descend- 
ing precipices on which no one unfamiliar with 
them would believe they could retain a foothold. 
I thought at one time that a mule was a crea- 
ture of no individuality ; that it differed from its 
fellows only in color and size ; and that its worst 
qualities were obstinacy and stupidity, and its 
best qualities patience and endurance. But my 
experience with the Wheeler Expedition taught 
me that, while a mule has the most fixed and sil- 
ly opinions on some matters, it is usually saga- 
cious, and has a distinct individuality. " Gray 
Johnny" was not much larger than a Shetland 
pony, and had an unconquerable temper, with a 
vicious way of showing it. One day, as we were 
ascending a cliff of sandstone clay by a narrow, 
slippery trail, he missed his footing and rolled fif- 
ty feet down an embankment, with over two hun- 
dred pounds of baggage on his back. He climbed 
up again unhurt, and had scarcely reached the 
path when he tumbled a second time, rolling over 
and over like a log. He struggled to the summit, 
however, and, evidently annoyed at his previous 
failures, he then kicked at the other mules, the 
trees, and the packers. When one of the latter 



108 A-S ADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

went toward him with a lasso, to hold him while 
his pack was being readjusted, he snapped at the 
man's arm with his teeth, and, missing it, seized 
the rope and chewed it into a pulp. It thus ap- 
pears that amiability was not one of Gray John- 
ny's virtues. He resented all familiarities with 
his heels, but he was an excellent worker ; and 
when he broke down, from the effects of the Ari- 
zonian heats, too hard labor, and too poor food, 
we were all sorry to lose him. 

Poor "Baby" was phenomenally quiet, and 
had all the symptoms of consumption or a broken 
heart. When her load was removed at the end 
of a long day's march, she would quickly retire to 
the shade of a pine-tree, without any of the an- 
tics played by her companions, and there she 
would stand aloof, with a pathetic look that went 
to my heart. The deceptive tricks and arts of 
which the other mules were guilty never entered 
her innocent head, and her virtues are affection- 
ately cherished in the memory of all the members 
of the camp. 

Very different from her, again, was the raw- 
boned " Bismarck," a most crafty wretch, with an 
omnivorous appetite, which never seemed satis- 
fied. Nothing within his reach was secure from 
his depredations, and at different times he robbed 
our mess of a whole ham, a bag of flour, a side of 
bacon, a box of tea, and several pounds of sugar. 
All things were to his taste, and when he could 



OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS. 109 

not get at the rations, he attempted to make as 
hearty a meal as possible of any articles of clothing 
left outside the tents. In this way he munched 
up a heavy coat, a woolen muffler, a pair of buck- 
skin trousers, and a straw hat. We were awa- 
kened one night by the thud of hoofs, and discov- 
ered " Bismarck " vigorously kicking at the mess- 
chest, with a view apparently to consuming the con- 
tents. Finding that he was watched, he galloped 
away with a stolen package of tacks in his mouth, 
from the effects of which he deservedly suffered 
for several days. On another occasion two of the 
packers were issuing rations of molasses and flour, 
when they were interrupted by a call to supper. 
The moment their backs were turned, " Bismarck," 
who had been furtively watching them from a 
distance, stole up, and alternately dipped his nose 
into the bag of flour and the tub of molasses, un- 
til it was elongated to nearly twice its natural size. 
But gluttony was not his only vice. He poked his 
head into every door that happened to be opened 
in the settlements through which we passed, and 
was only prevented from entering by the size of 
his pack. At Santa Fe he walked into a wine- 
shop, to the unspeakable dismay of the proprietor, 
who saw havoc among the glasses and bottles du- 
ring his visit. 

There is no stronger proof of animal sagacity 
than the quickness with which an inferior crea- 
ture recognizes and puts itself under the leader- 



110 A-S ADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

ship of one more intelligent. Among them- 
selves the coyotes are timorous even when gath- 
ered in large numbers ; but with a wolf at their 
head to guide them, they become dangerous foes. 
The mules, in the same way, put their trust in a 
horse, following it in places where they would not 
venture alone ; and for this reason we had a bell- 
mare to lead the pack-train. We "hobbled" 
her at night, and it was then safe to let the 
mules run free, as they seldom wandered beyond 
the sound of her bell. But in every herd there 
are a few independent spirits, and "Bismarck" 
was one of these. He was not content to stray 
alone, however, and sometimes succeeded in al- 
luring a few of his mates away from the safety 
of camp on a wild helter-skelter chase across the 
country. It was amusing to watch how cunning- 
ly he tempted them, first strolling as he nibbled 
the grass a short distance away from the bell- 
mare, and then looking up in a surprised way, 
that was meant to convey the impression that he 
had strayed unconsciously. When none of the 
others showed a disposition to join him, he would 
go no farther ; but if he saw his manoeuvres 
were watched, he would explain them by many 
furtive little motions, which were evidently intel- 
ligible to his companions. By such hints of pos- 
sible freedom he sometimes induced a silly mule 
to follow him ; but as a runaway nearly always 
returns toward the place he came from, we knew 



OVER THE CHASKA MOUNTAINS. HI 

in what direction to seek him, and we invariably 
found him before he had traveled very far from 
camp. 

I might describe each of the others as fully as 
I have described " Bismarck." I believe that it 
would be possible to write a novel of mule life, 
with a hero and heroine, a villain, and other char- 
acters to match those in the novels of our own 
society. But there are other points for mention 
of more practical interest. 

The mule is unsurpassed for travel in wild 
mountain countries. It is tough, strong, patient, 
and sure-footed ; and it is equally serviceable as 
a pack animal, a draught animal, or a riding ani- 
mal. It is capable of traveling twenty miles a 
day, over rough mountain trails, for six months 
of the year, with a two-hundred-pound load on its 
back and a very small quantity of food in its 
stomach. On account of its varied usefulness, it 
is more highly valued than a horse in the far 
southwest, where an Indian pony is not worth 
more than sixty or eighty dollars, while a good 
mule is often not procurable for less than one 
hundred and twenty-five dollars. The pack-train 
of our expedition thus offered a strong temptation 
to the numerous cattle-thieves who infest such 
stock-raising countries as New Mexico ; and we 
had to be watchful to avoid the unpleasant ex- 
perience of awaking some morning and finding 
our animals " stampeded." 



112 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

In the season of 1875 one of the surveying 
parties under Lieutenant Wheeler had a mishap 
of this kind, and the stolen mules were only re- 
covered after a chase of four hundred miles over 
a rough country. If at the end of a day's march 
we could have stabled our animals, or tied them 
up, we should have been spared much uneasi- 
ness; but we carried no fodder with us, and were 
obliged to let them wander in search of the best 
grazing they could find near camp. We were 
singularly fortunate, however, and did not lose a 
single animal by theft until we arrived at Albu- 
querque. Here there is a corral, into which we 
turned our train at night, and here two of our best 
mules were stolen. About thirty miles farther up 
the Rio Grande is the little town of Algodones, 
which is known as a haunt of desperadoes and 
cattle-thieves ; and thither Juan, our Mexican 
packer, was immediately dispatched. He was 
selected for the service in preference to an Amer- 
ican, as his appearance in the town would excite 
less notice ; and he sallied out of camp into the 
darkness, armed with a Springfield carbine, a 
Colt's revolver, and a liberal supply of cartridges, 
under orders to recover the mules if possible. He 
was away two days. Early the following morn- 
ing Lieutenant Morrison started out in another 
direction, 'and discovered tracks of the missing 
animals in the loose dust of a frequently traveled 
road, some distance from camp. He recognized 



A COUNTRY FOR COLON IZATIOK 113 

them by the fact that the prints showed a shoe 
missing from a hind hoof, and that one of the ani- 
mals corresponded in this particular. He followed 
up this single clew for twenty-four hours, clearly 
tracing the hoof -prints along the road and over 
indistinct trails, where, to eyes less sharp than 
those of the Western path-finder, they would have 
been invisible. But at last he lost sight of them 
as they turned off into open country, and he came 
back to camp tired and disappointed. Juan re- 
turned the next day with no better luck, and we 
went away from Albuquerque poorer by two 
mules. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A COUNTRY FOE COLONIZATION. 

A Geological Supper— What a Young Man might do in the Zuni 
Mountains — Sheep-Farming in New Mexico — A Narrow 
Escape from Drowning in a Mud Spring — Emigrants from 
Indiana — All Night in a Mexican Ranch. 

Having replaced our broken-down animals by 
others, our train presented a creditable appearance 
when we left Fort Wingate ; and for the two 
weeks following our experiences were easy and 
pleasant — that is to say, we had plenty of good 
water and grass and short marches. Bacon for 
breakfast, bacon for lunch, and bacon for supper, 
8 



114 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

is not in itself a thing calculated to fulfill one's 
ideas of an agreeable and nutritious article of 
diet. If our rations had been supplemented by a 
little fresh meat, or if ever that most frugal of 
vegetables, a potato, had been added to them, we 
should have been immeasurably nearer the ordi- 
nary standard of comfort. But fresh meat was 
only accessible to the expedition about once in 
three weeks ; fruit only grows in the valley of the 
Rio Grande ; and potatoes are as scarce as pome- 
granates in Greenland. Still, compared with what 
we had passed through, our experiences were abso- 
lutely luxurious. 

For several weeks the rain was more frequent 
than before ; and had we not been profoundly 
grateful for it, and fully sensible of the refresh- 
ing humidity and coolness produced in the atmos- 
phere, we might have complained of the precipi- 
tate manner it had of coming down and surprising 
us. Several times, when the afternoon was serene 
and clear, when our benevolent cook had spread 
the table-cloth and prepared all things for supper 
— baked bread and fried pork — the pines around 
our camp suddenly began to moan and crackle, and 
the cottonwoods to tremble as with a palsy. Fol- 
lowing these signs, great storm-clouds with hurri- 
cane folds raced across the heavens, and within a 
few moments the sky was hidden in murky vapors 
that dissolved in torrents over our unlucky heads. 
On such occasions all ceremonies were dispensed 



A COUNTRY FOR COLONIZATION. 115 

with; a rush was made on the table, and each man 
seized the dish nearest to his hand, disappeared 
with it into his tent, and made as satisfying a meal 
of it as he could, whether it consisted entirely of 
condiments, bread, or vegetables. As for me, I was 
usually fortunate enough to secure a variety of 
dishes on one plate, and, upon arriving at my tent 
in one of these sudden storms, found myself the 
happy possessor of a geological sort of mess, made 
up, so to speak, of several different periods. The 
upper crust consisted of dried apples, and beneath 
this was a stratum of baked beans, in which a 
small fossilized tree in the shape of a pickled cauli- 
flower was imbedded. Exploring further, and 
with increasing interest, I unearthed some doughy 
bread permeated with bacon gravy, and a tea- 
spoonful of sugar evidently deposited in the wrong 
place during the confusion of the moment. " Be 
bold ; ever heboid ; be not too bold." I had seen 
enough. I was hungry, and did not dare to go 
farther. My knife was without a fork and my 
tea without sugar. The rain had accumulated in 
the bottom of my plate, and was beating against 
the edges of the food ; but I was hungry, and I 
relished my supper heartily. For the rest of the 
evening I smoked my pipe, and, wrapped in an 
Ulster overcoat, lay in my tent reading the last 
newspaper that had come to hand, while the rain 
pattered dismally on the outside. 

A march of twelve miles from Wingate brought 



116 A-SADDLB IN THE WILD WEST. 

us to Bacon Springs, along a road skirting on one 
side a line of sandstone bluffs, a light red in color, 
which extended east and west a distance of over 
forty miles. The general form of these rocks is 
that of palisades, unbroken by crag or buttress 
from their summits to their bases ; but in seve- 
ral places they throw capes, with flat tops and 
columnar sides, far out into the plains that gird 
them. On the other side of the road are the Zuni 
.Mountains, which, compared with some of the 
ranges that we have occupied, are mere foothills, 
and do not in any place attain a greater height 
than 8,200 feet. But what they lack in eminence 
is compensated for by a fertile soil and luxuriant 
vegetation. An Eastern farmer would probably 
doubt the veracity of a person telling him of the 
existence in New Mexico of a grass so palatable 
that animals choose it in preference to clover. But 
in the lovely valleys of these mountains, where 
the purple blossoms of this plant load the air with 
their honeyed fragrance, there is a species of bunch 
grass, both nutritious and wholesome, of which 
the statement is quite true — a grass growing in 
abundance over hundreds of acres in wavy plumes 
a foot high. 

I think there are few places in the Territory 
where the aspect is so promising that an educated 
young man familiar with the Eastern States would 
be content to settle had he any other object than 
pecuniary gain, or where, even though he invested 



A COUNTRY FOR COLONIZATION. 117 

his patrimony, he could be induced to remain and 
attend to his interests. I have very little sympathy 
with those colonization schemes that would sud- 
denly transplant a boy from the lap of luxury to 
a Kansas flat, and there bid him exhaust his ener- 
gies in irrigating a wilderness. But in the Zuni 
Mountains there is splendid grazing, a rich soil, 
and plenty of good spring-water. The valleys 
are gardens. Our trail was curtained in places 
by a sort of sunflower growing to a height of eight 
feet, and acre after acre was covered with blos- 
soms, some like rubies with a golden fringe, others 
a gorgeous scarlet, others — but it is useless to at- 
tempt an enumeration of the prodigal displays of 
color that we met everywhere in this fertile coun- 
try. The forests abound with game. For three 
days the bacon in our mess was superseded by 
venison cutlets, breaded, and venison stew. One 
afternoon Mr. Karl entered camp from the moun- 
tains in a state of extreme excitement. He had 
seen two bears within an hour of each other. On 
the next day Lieutenant Morrison saw a third 
bear, two herds of elk, and several flocks of wild 
turkeys besides ; but as neither gentleman had his 
gun with him at the time, and as it is a thankless 
task to throw stones at either turkey or deer, and 
especially thankless to trifle unarmed with a bear, 
we were soon doomed to bacon again. 

A young man might settle here with all con- 
ditions in his favor. He might build himself a 



118 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

ranch, and learn to be happy among picturesque 
scenery and in a bracing climate. With a thou- 
sand dollars he could purchase a fairly stocked 
sheep farm. His flock would not, of course, ap- 
pear very imposing by the side of those of the 
wealthy Mexicans, some of whom have nearly a 
quarter of a million sheep ; but he would grow in 
self-respect and courage as he stood at the door of 
his ranch after a day's work, and saw visible evi- 
dence that he was really doing something in the 
world. 

The lands are public, and some speculators 
with very easy consciences are fast absorbing 
them by preemption. During a day's march 
through some of the most beautiful valleys, we 
saw how this generous law is complied with, or, 
I should say, how it is infringed. For a dwell- 
ing an empty log hut entirely open on one side — 
this for the door and window — is built, and a few 
branches are thrown over it for a roof. The " ac- 
tual residence " consists in an occasional visit by 
the preemptor, whose conscience would not other- 
wise allow him to swear that he had lived on the 
land for the prescribed time. 

But while the Zuiii Mountains are so fertile, 
they are bounded by desolate plains and mesas, 
and the traveler who seeks them has many hard- 
ships to endure before he reaches them. Occa- 
sionally, when we were near a road, we found the 
sandstone bluffs engraved and penciled with the 



A COUNTRY FOR COLONIZATION. 119 

names of those who had preceded us, and under 
the travelers' autographs there was sometimes a 
brief criticism of the country. One had cut his 
name in letters an inch long on one bluff, with the 
date of his passing, and a commentary : " This is a 
of a place. August, 1864." Another way- 
farer, coming several years later, has let a little light 
upon his experiences by writing sympathetically 
under the previous legend : " Right you are, by 
thunder ! " "No effort of the imagination is need- 
ed in those who have learned the toilsomeness 
of a long day's march over barren plains to real- 
ize the disgust that these two sufferers had felt 
in camping by an alkali spring, the waters of 
which were bitter to the taste and aggravating to 
the thirst. 

Mr. Clark again left the main party at Bacon 
Springs to go on a side trip, and was absent five 
days, returning with a crust of bread, the last 
morsel of his rations, after some pretty rough ex- 
periences. On the following morning he started 
out with a packer on another excursion, and was 
instructed to join us at a point above Agua Fria 
in the evening. In order to find good grass and 
water, we went several miles farther than we in- 
tended, however, and evening came without Mr. 
Clark. A large fire was lighted and kept burn- 
ing brightly all night, but the topographer was 
still missing — a circumstance the more distressing 
since the rain fell in torrents. ISTo one doubted 



120 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

his safety, but all were concerned for his comfort, 
and had an opportunity of expressing their sym- 
pathy in the morning, when he rode into camp 
with his companion, hungry and wet to the skin. 
He had been detained on a neighboring peak, and 
on getting down was overtaken by darkness, which 
prevented him from finding our trail. There was 
not a ranch within ten miles, and he spent the 
stormy and sleepless night seated in a pine forest, 
where the lightning shattered trees ivithin a few 
feet of him. A week or two before he narrowly 
escaped drowning in a mud-spring. He noticed 
what seemed to be a patch of moisture a few 
yards from the trail, and as we were short of 
water he dismounted from his horse to examine 
it. Stretching out his toe in the gracefully cau- 
tious manner of a nymph trying the water before 
bathing, his foot sank from under him, and in less 
time than it takes to write these words, as the 
authors of the " penny dreadfuls " say, he was up 
to his knees in mud. He recovered himself by a 
vigorous leap, and had the satisfaction of discov- 
ering by fathoming the spring, which was over 
twelve feet deep, that be had escaped death of 
a horrible kind. 

Few people visit New Mexico for pleasure. 
The travelers from the East that we occasionally 
met were all bound on errands of business among 
the miners, stock-raisers, and Indians. One day 
we encountered two families from Indiana, who 



A COUNTKY FOR COLONIZATION. 121 

had first migrated to Colorado Springs, and, 
not having succeeded there, were bound to Ari- 
zona, whence, in event of another failure, they 
proposed to go to Southern California, and home 
again to the old farm, by the Wabash, should all 
things turn against them. Apparently they had 
quite forgotten that man's life is limited to three 
score and ten, and they looked forward to all pos- 
sible reverses with cheerful resignation, and a de- 
gree of confidence in their own recuperative 
powers that was fairly sublime. The elders were 
not beginners in the battle either, as their faded 
appearance proved. It did not seem possible that 
the lank, cadaverous men had enough virility in 
them to go through with any undertaking. The 
women were tall, thin, shrill, flat-breasted, and 
sharp-eyed. There were some very young girls 
among them, and I thought that they too would 
be haggard and gray before the strife was over. 
But all the members of the party were lively and 
energetic in their conversation, and, in alluding 
to their unsettled condition and their uncertainty 
of achieving anything, were apparently as content 
as though they were on the road to certain riches. 
A greater drawback to the Territory than the 
thriftlessness of its native inhabitants is the lack 
of transportation facilities. Between the prin- 
cipal towns there are stage-lines, with small, un- 
comfortable coaches, that travel night and day at 
the rate of about six miles an hour. The fare of 



122 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

these conveyances is twenty or twenty-five cents 
a mile, and only forty pounds of baggage are 
allowed to each passenger. A light, uncovered 
wagon called a " buekboard " is run with the mail 
between less important points, and the fare by 
this is the same as by coach. Meals at the stage 
stations cost one dollar each ; and, if the traveler 
finds it necessary to " put up " at a native ranch, 
he is sometimes charged still more exorbitantly. 
One evening two belated members of our party 
were away from camp on a side-trip, and, having 
neither food nor bedding with them, sought lodg- 
ings at the ranch of a Mexican. They were sup- 
plied with a supper of chicken, bread, and coffee. 
As is the custom, one of the women of the house 
then asked them whether they would prefer to 
sleep indoors or out ; and, as the night was damp, 
they selected the inside. So two mattresses and 
blankets were spread for them on the floor of the 
sitting-room, and they prepared to retire. The 
bashful young German professor, who rode the 
odometer of the expedition, was unbuttoning his 
coat, when his sunburnt face became overspread 
with blushes. The host and hostess were making 
two extra beds on the other side of the room ; 
and before the young Teuton could recover his 
composure they had blown out the lamp, and 
tucked themselves in. But this was not the 
worst. Senora had a bad toothache, and Senor 
constantly muttered quiet oaths all to himself. 



A COUNTRY FOR COLONIZATION. 123 

Two more sympathetic men do not breathe than 
the guests ; but what wonder that this dismal 
concert awoke vengeful feelings in them, as they 
tossed uneasily in their beds ? In the midst of 
the night Senor rose stealthily and went out of 
the room. By and by he returned and stood at 
the entrance, looking in a commiserating way at 
the explorers, one of whom lay awake, wondering 
what the old fellow meant. Presently Senor 
said, in the placid voice of a person conveying 
some good news : " One of the mules has gone " — 
one of the mules that had been intrusted to his 
care the night before ! El diablo! The guests 
were up in a moment and outside the house in the 
darkness. Senor followed leisurely with an un- 
disturbed face, puffing at a cigarette with as little 
concern as a bee has for the wind that rocks 
the stalk on which it rests. He looked calmly 
around from the doorway while his guests were 
tearing their feet to pieces on the rocky hill-sides, 
and anon he espied the missing brute grazing 
near the corral. "See," he says, "there it is." 
And when he is reviled he replies with the great- 
est equanimity, " Hdblemos de otra cosa, /Seftores " 
— let us change the subject. In the morning the 
guests made a frugal breakfast of jerked beef, 
bread, and coffee, and called for their score. The 
old sinner had the impudence to demand five dol- 
lars, to insist upon it, and to swear by all the saints 
in the calendar that his prices were ruinously low. 



124 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

CHAPTER X. 

A MODERN PUEBLO. 

Peeping into a Crater — The Wonders at the Bottom — Travel- 
ing over a Lava Bed — The Settlement of Laguna — The 
Dress and Personal Appearance of the Pueblo Indians — 
Madame Pueblo — Old Palestine Reproduced — A Pastoral 
Community — The Pharisaism of the Missionaries — The 
Chasm in the Plain — The Fertility of the Bottom Lands 
of the Rio Grande. 

By consulting a map the reader will see that 
after leaving Pueblo, we worked in a partial cir- 
cle around Santa Fe. At Tierra Amarilla the 
former town was one hundred miles distant ; at 
Fort Wingate it was one hundred and fifty miles 
distant ; and we were not at any time more than 
three hundred miles away from it, although the 
distance traveled measured over one thousand 
miles. At Wingate the main division had done 
six hundred and thirty-five miles, and the side 
parties one hundred and thirty-five miles. After 
that we traveled, with detours, nearly three hun- 
dred miles more. 

The previous chapters have shown that our 
path was not altogether easy. For several days 
before reaching Albuquerque our rations were 
reduced to coffee without sugar, and dry bread. 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 125 

We made dinners of herbs, and tantalized our 
thirst with mud. But we read in nearly every 
page of Nature's book, and saw her infinitely 
manifest in the sterile plains, the gorgeous mesas, 
and the snowy sierras of the Mother Range. 

To the earnest geologist, more than to any 
other man, she has revealed herself in New Mex- 
ico ; and she speaks to him here in her various 
tones with an eloquence that compensates him for 
all the annoyances incident to camp-life in a des- 
ert. As if to complete our experiences so as to 
include in them every note that composes her 
scale, we found a little to the west of Agua 
Fria, among the Zuni Mountains, a crater as per- 
fect as it was twenty-four hours after its last vol- 
ume of hissing flame. As we looked at it from 
the distance, it was simply one peak in, a chain of 
hills; well robed in foliage ; but as we ascended it 
with a view to establishing a triangulation station 
on the summit, and passed over the timber-line, 
we found masses of broken lava before us, in which 
our feet sank ankle-deep. The bubble-blown 
ashes of the earth's dead passions were covered 
with lacerating points like nails that double-soled 
boots could no more resist than a sheet of paper. 
But we toiled on and on, dragging ourselves up 
by projecting stones and bunches of grass. Be- 
low us were the pines and the clearings, yellow 
and purple with sunflowers and clover. Looking 
up, we seemed to be climbing the sides of an in- 



126 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

verted basin, the bottom of which was represent- 
ed by the flat top of the peak. 

When we had climbed eight hundred or nine 
hundred feet above the surrounding level, we 
gained the summit, and stood on a rim of black 
lava, which extended about four feet inwardly 
around the cone. This was the lip of the crater, 
and advancing to the edge of it, we looked into 
the throat. A whole week's toil would have been 
repaid in the sight that met us — a sight so novel 
and beautiful that, remembering it, any one would 
be ready to think only of the grand features of 
New Mexico. The abyss was not dark, although 
its great depth was proved by the distant sound 
of pebbles that we threw into it. By the same 
process that it gives color to the flowers, the sun 
seemed to have shed some of its warm splendors 
on the corrugated mass of lava, which was lighted 
with bands of yellow and red, joining each other 
by a hundred intermediate tints. I can give no 
idea of how rich these colors were, nor can I de- 
scribe how the crimson faded into a faint pink, 
and how the yellow, in its fullness a buff, was 
transmitted by various shades into a delicate am- 
ber-tint, like the confession of dawn in the morn- 
ing sky. I can only tell how the members of the 
expedition, breathless from their exertions, stood 
on the brink of the hollow, full of silent amazement 
and rapture. But the colors were not all. Blown 
into the air by a strong wind, some Cottonwood 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 127 

seeds had dropped into the crater, and grown 
out of its rocky heart into mature trees, with 
canopies of quivering leaves and silvery boughs. 
Their highest branches were at least seventy feet 
below us; and as the wind swept among them, 
the concave walls echoed the murmurs, until 
it sounded like the chorus of a great forest in a 
gale. 

The country to the west was fair, with hills and 
valleys, and to the north mesas gleamed red and 
white and green. But toward the south there was 
a sea of lava rolling over many miles, unrelieved 
by a blade of grass or a single tree. Over a large 
area east of the Zufii Mountains similar volcanic 
remains are seen in a multitude of forms — some- 
times in great blocks piled one over the other 
along the banks of a stream, and sometimes in 
crumbling walls and oval shells, lying among ver- 
dant fields. 

Between Agua Fria and the Mexican town of 
San Rafael, which is near the former site of Fort 
Wingate, we saw a number of small craters from 
ten to fifty feet high, climbing which we looked 
into deep caverns extending far below the sur- 
face. These are completely coated by moss, and 
are so hedged in by greenery that they lend an 
additional charm to the scene. Some one has 
spoken of Edinburgh Castle as a lump of verdi- 
gris — a simile neither poetic nor elegant, but 
graphic, and one that describes the volcanic frag- 






128 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

ments better than I can. They look very much 
like romantic old English abbeys sequestered 
among patriarchal yews and tenacious ivy. 

But the black plain that we saw from the sum- 
mit of the principal crater had not one beauty to 
gladden the eye. It was a forbidding waste, and 
those members of the expedition who ventured to 
cross it nearly came to a disastrous end. The 
spikes in the surface tore off their mules' shoes* 
and wore their hoofs to the bone. For several 
miles their path had been trailed in blood, and 
when they came into camp they had been afoot 
forty-eight hours. The mules, which were the 
finest animals in our herd, subsequently died. 

Soon after we left the Zuni range, Mount Tay- 
lor, or the Mountain of San Mateo, as it is vari- 
ably called, came into view, and for several days 
we saw its three peaks high above the mesas — 
in the early morning, when they were cold and 
wreathed in clouds ; at sunrise, when long rays 
of light fell upon them and illuminated their 
knolls and cliffs ; and in the evenings, when they 
glowed for a moment before a heavy haze of blue 
flooded them like a rising tide, and closed them 
in its folds for the night. They were landmarks 
to us for many weeks. We first caught a glimpse 
of them when we were on the Mesa Tachada, again 
near the Zuni Mountains, and again near Santa 
Fe. The highest measures about thirteen thou- 
sand feet above the level of the sea, and this, 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 129 

with the others, which are almost the same height, 
is visible from every important elevation in the 
Territory. 

Traveling in an eastern direction from Agua 
Fria to Albuquerque, we stayed for a day near 
the Indian settlement of Laguna, one of the 
modern pueblos. The old ruins, such as Pueblo 
Pintado, are much superior as works of architec- 
ture to the modern towns, and the movement of 
their race, if we assume that the old and new 
dwellers in the pueblos come of the same stock, 
has been retrograde. But the Pueblo Indians of 
to-day, deteriorated as they are, rank in all respects 
as far above the savage Comanches, Cheyennes, 
and Arapahoes of the plains, and the sneaking 
Utes and Apaches of the mountains, as the comely, 
lovable natives of the Society Islands rank above 
the cannibals who live on the same archipelago 
within a few hundred miles of them. 

The men dress like the Navajos. They wear a 
girded tunic of some cotton print, usually figured 
with flowers, and sometimes made of two Turkey- 
red pocket handkerchiefs. Their legs are shel- 
tered in cotton drawers and a breech-clout ; or I 
should say parts of their legs are sheltered in this 
way, for these children of nature have so curtailed 
their drawers that their presence might cause a 
very bashful person much embarrassment. Their 
long, wiry hair is" gathered behind in a cue, and 
tied by a ribbon, a string, a slip of buckskin, or a 
9 



130 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

shoe-lace. The red pocket handkerchief again 
conies into service as a tiara, and when we have 
mentioned this, with the breech-clout, the tunic, a 
bead- work shot-bag, and a powderhorn, we have 
completely enumerated all the important features 
of a Pueblo Indian's outfit. They are not as 
handsome as the Navajos, and do not look as 
powerful. Their bodies are spare and their faces 
wan. Judging them by their appearance, you 
would consider them sad, but they are as light- 
hearted as children. 

The women are short and broad, and like great 
rag dolls, so extensively are they swathed in 
clothes. The bandages begin at the ankles and 
continue, in one form or other, almost without 
intermission, to the neck. Madame Pueblo in- 
dulges in a few barbarian colors. Her dress is 
usually black, the funereal tone of which is enli- 
vened by a red tippet. She is not in the condi- 
tion of abject submission to her husband that the 
women of other tribes are. Her lord and master 
graciously condescends to carry the baby some- 
times ; and, if he has been to school, he assists in 
the rougher household duties, such, for instance, 
as bringing home the melons for dinner, and 
chopping wood for the fire. We saw a woman 
surrounded by her pretty children in the Nava- 
jo country, felling pines with a heavy axe, and 
not resting from her work once in an hour, while 
her stalwart husband stood by and watched the 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 131 

sweat rolling from her. But where there are 
American schools, as in the pueblos, the women 
are treated with a little kindness ; and it is a pity- 
that the zealous reformers in the States who are 
so anxious to emancipate contented young wives 
from the thraldom of loving husbands do not di- 
vert some of their superfluous energy toward the 
establishment of more schools among the Indians, 
in which good work they might find a practical 
reward. Whenever we encamped near an Indian 
settlement, the inhabitants came down to see us, 
and showed a child-like delight and interest in 
our outfit. The men crowded around the theodo- 
lite, unable to make out whether it was a pep- 
per-box or a new kind of weapon ; and if the 
topographer was in a conceding mood, they, to 
their intense satisfaction, were permitted to peep 
through it. Among the Navajos the squaws mean- 
while sat at a respectful distance, naturally dy- 
ing of curiosity, which they, poor things, dared 
not gratify by approaching nearer. But the 
Pueblo " bucks " were more gallant, and, when 
they had exhausted all the wonders themselves, 
they generously gave their wives a chance to take 
one peep before going home. This was a real tri- 
umph of education over selfishness and brutality, 
and we commend it to the consideration of those 
agitators who, in a paradox, are only content in 
their discontent. 

The houses of the Pueblo Indians, as I have 



132 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

already explained, are built of adobe in terraces, 
on a commanding hillside, and in their original 
condition of fortification were only accessible by 
a portable ladder. The occupants of the lower 
story still use this primitive device, from necessity 
rather than fear or desire ; but in these good days 
of peace the ladders are never removed, the lower 
stories are supplied with doors and windows, and 
the stranger passes through the city gates unmo- 
lested and unquestioned. Each tenement con- 
sists of two or three rooms, and outside each ter- 
race there are several dome-shaped mud ovens, 
four or five feet high, which are used in common. 
The floors are of mud, the walls are of mud, and 
the roofs are of logs. There is nothing of the 
picturesque in the prevailing squalor and dilapi- 
dation of the houses. They scarcely seem fit for 
occupancy, so ruinous are they. A chair or a ta- 
ble is an unwonted luxury, and a sign of its own- 
er's wealth. But the manners and dress of the 
Indians — the black-robed women with water ollas 
balanced on their heads, and the long-haired men 
in their loose tunics driving ox-teams or shoulder- 
ing primitive scythes — give an oriental aspect to 
the winding, ill-conditioned little streets within 
the walls. 

There is a strong resemblance between some 
of the features of New Mexican villages and old 
Palestine, as it is pictured in the Bible. The like- 
ness is strongest among the simple dwellers in 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 133 

the pueblos, who are industrious and care little 
for the pleasures of the chase. Their farms, ac- 
quired in old Spanish grants, include some of the 
best land in the Territory, and are cultivated with 
greater care and better results than those of the 
neighboring Mexicans. Their principal crops are 
maize, wheat, apples, and (in the valley of the 
Rio Grande) grapes, plums, and melons. A bow- 
ery lookout is built of interlaced boughs in every 
field, and soon after sunrise the women and chil- 
dren issue from their houses, and make their way 
to their own patches, where, sheltered in one of 
the summer-houses, they remain guarding the 
crops from thieves during the day. I question if 
there is a happier people under the sun than these 
wild children, to whom life seems to be one long, 
sunny summer, without a troublesome cloud of 
jealousy, anxiety, or hatred. Laughter ripples 
among the leaves the whole day. The women 
love their babies with passionate devotion, and in 
this respect are as good and kind as the best of 
white mothers ; and the children scarcely ever 
quarrel, the older ones showing the younger ones 
a degree of forbearance that would be eminently 
creditable to young Christians were it a little more 
frequent among them. Meanwhile the men are 
at work in the fields with clumsy wooden plows, 
drawn by lazy ox-teams ; and when evening comes, 
and the laborers prepare to start for home, one 
of their number is detailed to remain in the look- 



134 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

out bower, where his voice is heard during the 
night rising in the strange, plaintive song of his 
people. 

It is lamentable that the religious dissensions 
of sects which bring missionary endeavor to ridi- 
cule in nearly every part of the world have even 
broken out in these quiet, out-of-the-way little 
pueblos. In this settlement of Laguna I have been 
describing, there is a humble little adobe building 
with a belfry, where a Catholic priest officiates 
once a month, and a similar building that is used 
conjointly by a Protestant minister and a govern- 
ment schoolmaster. The twelve hundred Indians 
in the town might learn many lessons in grace and 
arithmetic were their instructors united ; but the 
minister and dominie are alienated from the priest 
on spiritual grounds, while he is opposed to them 
in all things. The Roman Archbishop has openly 
declared his antagonism to unsectarian schools, 
and discourages the attendance of his parishioners 
in them. So the little mud church, instead of 
being a monument of paternal love and wisdom, 
is an element of discord and enmity ; and it might 
have been better for the people had they been left 
to develop their spiritual natures in the glow of 
heathen fires rather than be converted to a religion 
so perverted from its truth by the prejudices of 
its ministers that it teaches Pharisaism in its first 
lessons. A part of the inhabitants still believe in 
the coming of Montezuma, and worship in subter- 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 135 

ranean chambers, into which foreigners are seldom 
admitted. Complete secrecy in their ceremonies 
is considered so essential that guards are posted 
at the entrance to the town several times in the 
year ; but these are the only occasions when the 
prying stranger is refused admittance to the 
streets. 

About twenty miles from Laguna we crossed 
some plains near Sheep Spring, and suddenly came 
upon a deep volcanic ravine, with walls of bluish 
lava, sheer from the top to the bottom, and at 
least seven hundred feet high. In running over 
the continent by railroad, while under the influence 
of the monotonous character of the plains and prai- 
ries, one is inclined to think that, compared with 
the latter, the proportion of picturesque scenery 
in America is insignificant. But before one has 
traveled many hundred miles in New Mexico or 
Colorado, he is bound to acknowledge that any 
one of their abounding marvels would be enough 
to make a more accessible country famous. What 
has the East, or England, or France, or Germany 
to equal this ravine, for instance, the Canado Al- 
amos, as it is called ? Compared with it, the Pic- 
tured Rocks, the Virginia Natural Bridge, Wat- 
kins Glen, or the most curious features of the 
British coast are worth as little note as a boy's 
box of magic compared with the best tricks of a 
skilled prestidigitateur ; and yet here, in the midst 
of a thousand marvels, it has nothing more than 



136 A-S ADDLE IN THE wftiD WEST. 

a name and scarcely excites a moment's wonder 
The surrounding country is almost flat, and is 
bounded by abrupt mesas. We march along with 
apparently nothing but the plains ahead of us, 
and suddenly, without warning, as we approach a 
crest of the wavy land, we see the edge of the gulf. 
Less than a dozen yards away this enormous fis- 
sure lays bare the earth in a width of two hundred 
feet and a depth of seven hundred feet. The 
walls are plumb and smooth, the color of coal. 
The flat bottom is filled with yellow sand and 
pebbles, meandered by a babbling creek. Thickets 
of trees and shrubs crop out of all this barrenness, 
apparently independent of nourishment ; and here 
a great slice of lava leans over from the farther 
wall, as though it had been cut by a knife, only 
awaiting an occasion to tumble into the canon. 
In the chasm between it and the mainland a forest 
is growing; and as we throw stones down it, a flock 
of birds shriek remonstrance at our unprovoked 
assault. 

From this point we struck for the fertile val- 
ley of the Rio Grande, the most productive part of 
New Mexico, and in a week reached the odd little 
town of Santa Fe. 

The bottom lands of the Rio Grande with 
which we became acquainted have been compared 
to the Nile, of Egypt ; and they form the best 
portion of New Mexico, in an agricultural point 
of view. Four fifths of the population live upon 



A MODERN PUEBLO. 137 

the banks of the Rio Grande, and the settlements 
are traversed by large irrigating ditches, averaging 
two feet in depth and three in width. The river 
carries with it large quantities of a reddish-gray 
matter, which settles when the water is left in 
repose for several hours ; and this is the only fer- 
tilizer used, the soil yielding fruits, grain, and 
farm-produce of every description in abundance, 
notwithstanding the fact that it has been under 
cultivation for over two hundred and fifty years. 
Onions weighing over two pounds, cabbages of 
sixty pounds, turnips of enormous size, peas, 
watermelons, squashes, beans, Indian corn, and 
figs are grown in great profusion. 

The bottom lands appear well adapted to 
grape-growing, and already the El Paso wine has 
gained a great reputation. It was said that, al- 
though every effort had been made to raise pota- 
toes, none had been successful. But the cause of 
the failure was ascertained to be carelessness on 
the part of the Mexicans, who neither hoe the 
ground sufficiently nor remove the numerous 
caterpillars from the herbage ; and more intelli- 
gent Americans have succeeded in raising pota- 
toes of fine quality. 

While the properties of these lands are so ex- 
cellent, however, the bottoms do not average more 
than two miles in width, and the mesas embracing 
them show hardly a sign of vegetation, excepting 
the sage-bush. Wherever water does not border 



138 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

the soil, or is not carried there by ditches, even 
grass is absent, and vegetation is defeated by the 
scarcity of rains, combined with the sandy, 
porous nature of the soil. Well-watered ground 
and a perpetually dry atmosphere form a union of 
circumstances exceedingly favorable for splendid 
development of crops of all kinds. This fact can 
be observed not only in New Mexico along the 
valleys of the water-courses, but also in Colorado, 
where by means of irrigation the most abundant 
crops are developed. In 1872 three times as much 
corn was raised to the acre in Colorado as in 
neighboring Kansas, where a moist atmosphere 
and occasional rains obviate the necessity of irri- 
gation. The splendid growth of firs and pines 
above an altitude of 7,000 feet in New Mexico 
may also be attributed to the above-mentioned 
facts. The soil contains sufficient moisture for the 
trees, while the atmosphere is mostly dry and the 
sky seldom covered with clouds. Thus the reduc- 
tion of carbonic acid is rarely retarded by absence 
of direct sunlight ; the circulation of the sap is 
greatly increased by the more rapid evaporation 
from the leaves ; and all moisture necessary for 
the body of the tree is supplied by the roots. 



SANTA Fft 139 

CHAPTER XL 

SANTA FE. 

The Capital of New Mexico — The Modesty of the Senoras — 
The Appearance of the Streets — A Very Mixed Popula- 
tion — The Attractions of a Baby Carriage — Croquet in 
the Mountains — Scenes around a Gambling Table — The 
Great Army Game of " Chuck-a-Luck " — A Mexican Ball. 

When one is traveling toward an objective 
point for three consecutive months, it is bound to 
excite some speculations on its appearance, whether 
it be Rome, Reykjavik, Paris, or Pottsville ; and 
those members of the expedition to whom the 
Territory was a new country looked forward to 
our arrival at Santa Fe with greater interest than 
our actual acquaintance with the town sustained. 
Santa Fe is the axis on which New Mexico turns, 
the capital of the Territory, and the distributing 
point of all the territorial mails. It was a rising 
settlement when the progenitors of the St. Nicho- 
las Society first possessed Manhattan Island, and it 
is as iniquitous as it is old. It has political rings, 
show-windows, and bar-rooms ; and we looked 
forward to it as a restoration to the luxurious 
civilization that we left behind at Pueblo. But 
our speculations as to its appearance were all 
wrong, as such speculations usually are. We 
reached it from the town of Galisteo, twenty-two 



140 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

miles away, traveling through an undulating 
country, wooded by sturdy cacti, three or four 
feet high, and knots of dwarf pine. Toward 
three in the afternoon we attained the crest of a 
hill, and in the valley below lay Santa Fe, sunning 
itself by the side of a great mountain. 

It is not an impressive little city by any means, 
but it is compactly built, and has not the erratic 
inclination of many Mexican towns to straggle 
over as much ground as possible. We entered by 
a long, narrow street lined with one-storied mud 
houses, mostly built in the form of quadrangles, 
with interior courtyards, suggestive of small model 
prisons. Some dark-eyed senoras and senoritas 
were seated at the doors making cigarettes, and 
they drew their shawls more closely about them 
as we passed. A glance into the interior of the 
houses showed us clean mud floors and white- 
washed mud walls, with the family couch rolled 
up to do service for chairs during the day. Had 
we come along here in early morning, we should 
have found this part of the population abed in the 
street ; for these warm-blooded Southerners sel- 
dom sleep indoors during the hot weather. The 
black shawls were closing like so many crows' 
wings as we advanced. Indeed, the Mexican 
woman is strangely coy with this article of dress, 
which she uses as a substitute for both mantle 
and bonnet ; and, however short or long a dis- 
tance she is going, she never fails to throw it over 



SANTA Ft. 141 

her head, sometimes in such a way as to conceal 
the whole of her lower features. Shoes and stock- 
ings, bare legs and feet, are matters of indifference 
to her, but she is ever scrupulous about the tapalo. 
Some drunken soldiers put their beery faces out- 
side a door to stare at us, and a Pueblo Indian 
trotted along on a donkey or burro ahead of us, 
seated so far astern that we thought he must have 
been brought up to ride on the tail itself in case 
of necessity. Then an eight-bull wagon team 
blocked the way, and its Mexican drivers hissed 
and spluttered blasphemy. 

Thus far we had not seen an American, and 
all things looked foreign to us. The cramped 
cobble-stoned streets, with their hedges of squat 
flat-roofed houses ; the porticoes reaching from 
every house to the curb ; the brown passers-by, 
with bushy black hair and lustrous eyes ; the in- 
describable frowsy hucksters seated at the cor- 
ners before their scant stocks of watermelons — 
these were Mexican elements. But by and by we 
passed from the outskirts into the busy part of 
the town, which is comprised within the space of 
a small square, with a leafy little park in the cen- 
ter, and here we were at the very core of the 
Territory. 

With two exceptions, the stores are all one 
story high, and a barber's pole is the only orna- 
ment among them all ; but they run backward 
and sideward to such an extent that they manage 



142 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

to cover considerable space. The north side of 
the square is occupied by the Governor's " Pal- 
ace," which is an oblong adobe, completely unin- 
teresting and unimaginably ugly. In fact, the 
people of Santa Fe seem utterly destitute of taste, 
and out of all the merchants, many of whom are 
very wealthy, not one has built a pretty store or 
house for himself. In the park there is a sol- 
diers' monument. It is an obelisk, and it shows 
how ungraceful so simple a form as that may be 
made by unskillful hands. The sculptor's name 
is McGee, and he is welcome to the fame of his 
work. Quite an active throng circulates on the 
plaza — fashionably dressed civilians, military offi- 
cers in blue and gold, rough-looking soldiers, 
weather-beaten emigrants, and broad-hatted team- 
sters with raw-hide whips that they crack like a 
pistol. There is a clanking of spurs on the side- 
walk, and some dashing cavalrymen clatter round 
the corner. A baby carriage comes along; and 
what balm, what bliss, what consolation, what 
visions of all kinds of tender emotions and scenes 
that baby carriage, with its fair propeller, neatly 
dressed in bewitching muslin, gave to us vaga- 
bonds who had been so long removed from all 
domesticity ! I never cared about these perambu- 
lators before, and regarded them somewhat in the 
light of a nuisance to an active pedestrian. But 
I am at a loss for similes to describe how grate- 
ful this little vehicle was. It was like the ver- 



SANTA F± 143 

bena in the dry mesa country, like all the espe- 
cially pleasant things I can think of — like a cup 
of French coffee after a good dinner, or like 
the smoke of a favorite meerschaum after a hard 
day's work. There were some very handsome and 
tastefully dressed children afoot also, with very 
natty nursery maids in attendance ; and we be- 
gan to think better of Santa Fe. Our good opin- 
ion was fairly won when we saw the officers' 
quarters, a row of pretty little cottages set in 
gardens among trees, their wide porticoes walled 
with a bowery wall of trailing plants running 
from top to bottom. The flowers hedged them 
in on every side — flowers of every color and many 
shapes. Some of the windows are curtained with 
damask and lace, and the interiors are furnished 
with a degree of luxury and taste quitte unusual 
in this savage Western world. In the evenings 
the band plays and the ladies engage in croquet. 
Then, if you are a looker-on and see the purple 
fall on the mountain opposite, and hear the beat 
of the mallets and the strain of the music, the 
effect is very pretty. 

We camped in front of the new court-house, 
the building of which was begun twelve years 
ago, and has not yet been finished. What there is 
of it consists of four walls of stone, without any 
ornamentation, and a number of windows with 
wooden frames in them, and these together cost 
$70,000. 



144 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

Let us glance now at the night side of the 
town. The streets are well filled, for the Santa 
Fean is an inveterate prowler, and invariably sal- 
lies forth after dark to " see what is going on." 
There is some strumming music in the saloons, 
and if your ears are sharp you may catch the 
sound of the dice-box, and hear such monosylla- 
bles as " tray, two aces, deuce, and a four." Here 
is a place called the Bank Exchange, which is ruf- 
fled all over with tissue-paper frills that cover 
ceilings, walls, and bar. Three musicians are 
seated in an alcove at the back, which is also ruf- 
fled with tissue paper, one with a cornet, another 
with a guitar, and the third with a flageolet. The 
cornet might as well be alone, for its windy ef- 
forts completely swamp the other two instruments. 
The floor is occupied by about six gaming-tables, 
each of which is presided over by a banker and 
surrounded by a crowd of men and boys. The 
greatest number, however, swarm around a table 
the master of which might stand for a portrait of 
Mr. John Oakhurst, of Poker Flat. The game 
here is " chuck-a-luck," and is described through 
the nose as " the old army sport played all the 
way from Maine to California." The table is 
divided into small squares numbered, and the 
players stake their money on the numbers of their 
choice. A weazen old Mexican, with palsied form, 
drops ten cents on the ace ; a boy not more than 
thirteen ventures on the tray, and some soldiers 



SANTA F& 145 

fill other spaces of the board. "Are you all 
down — all done ? " The dice-box is rattled, and 
the little ivory bits are rolled out. The old 
Mexican trembles, and his sunken eyes glisten as 
if a fortune depended on the result, whereas it is 
only bread. No ace is turned up on the dice, and 
he loses ; so does the boy ; but the soldiers win 
and " go in " again. The other tables are occupied 
by Spanish monte and faro, and each attracts 
crowds of spectators and customers. There is 
another gambling-house, on a more extensive 
scale, a little farther up the street, and a dance- 
house a little way below. The Mexican baile is a 
very well-conducted affair, and the seiioritas who 
attend them give no hint of their actual levity in 
their behavior. The music and movements of the 
waltzes are sometimes very novel and pretty, but 
the baile is, after all, but a common dance, lead- 
ing to immoral purposes. 

I can not begin to catalogue all the vices of 
Santa Fe, for it is probably the fastest little city 
in the world. In such a city — with a population 
gathered from all quarters — where most of the 
sojourners are big-coated, broad-shouldered min- 
ers, stock-raisers, and soldiers, fresh from con- 
finement in solitary ranches or long marches over 
the Plains, and seeking an outlet for a six-months' 
accumulation of pent-up deviltry — it would be 
strange if there were not a good deal of wicked- 
ness on the surface. But besides these rough-and- 
10 



146 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

tumble elements there is a small — very small — 
coterie of prosperous merchants and professional 
men of responsibility ; and even these do not 
incur any discredit by frequenting the common 
dance-house or sitting down in a public place 
and staking their money on the faro table. It 
is here the most serious objection to Santa Fe 
comes in. Some recklessness and dissipation is 
inevitable in all growing Western towns, but 
the moral sentiment of a place is at a very low 
ebb indeed when the husbands of decent wo- 
men and the fathers of innocent children are 
conscious of no disgrace in exposing their love 
for such degraded amusements. A room in the 
principal hotel is devoted to gambling, and no 
secrecy is made of the fact. The prominent mer- 
chant with a spare hour on his hands wastes it 
here, while the clerk dispels his midday languor 
by throwing away his dimes on the democratic 
chuck-a-luck table a few doors away. " Nothing 
is thought of it." You are told this again and 
again ; and whenever a breach of propriety is 
noticed in society, this is the invariable response. 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 147 
CHAPTER XII. 

A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 

The Dangers of the Arroyas — An Unusual Telegraph Line — A 
Church Three Centuries Old — The Sanguinary Feuds of 
the Mexicans and Indians — An Attack of Mountain Fe- 
ver — Sixty Miles for Medicine. 

On the morning we left Santa F6 the weather 
was clear and warm, and the sky was a beautiful 
sapphire, with masses of immaculate white float- 
ing gently athwart it. A golden haze lay on the 
mountains. The people were dressed in cool 
linens and duck, and straw hats. The silver 
thread in the thermometer stretched itself into 
the eighties. It was an indolent, dreamy, ener- 
vating bit of summer that had fallen into the au- 
tumn. We left the town by the stage road to 
Pueblo, passed the old adobe church that is 
crumbling to ruin under the weight of two hun- 
dred and fifty years, and soon went out among 
the interminable cacti and pines again. By and 
by a breeze sprang up, the fleece was blown away, 
and leaden clouds mantled the sky in its place. 
We had started out in trousers and shirts. 
Heavy Ulsters and cavalry overcoats did not 
avail against the midwinter cold that now crept 
down upon us from the mountains and chilled the 



148 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

stoutest of us to the marrow. The clouds thick- 
ened and lowered, and the lightning broke in 
forks and spirals against somber peaks. Then the 
rain came down in a flood and drenched us to the 
skin ; having succeeded in which, it changed to 
a spiteful hail, and beat against us until our 
faces and hands tingled with pain. Now, you 
may think that such a sudden change of weather 
is phenomenal, as it would be elsewhere ; but in 
the neighborhood of Santa Fe it is quite common, 
and the inhabitants are so used to it that, it is 
facetiously said, they never venture out in a light 
suit without carrying an Esquimaux overcoat over 
their arm and a seal-skin cap in their pockets. 

I went along the road with a little stream of 
water mournfully trickling from the brim of my 
hat down on my nose, and my clothes clinging to 
me like a worn-out mustard-plaster, envying with 
all my heart the author of " A Princess of Thule," 
and " The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," the 
only man known to me who is gifted with the 
happy power of thoroughly enjoying a rain-storm, 
and the singular equanimity of disposition that 
enables him to discover beauties out of a wet 
jacket. No doubt he would have seen all the ele- 
ments of the picturesque in the sloppy road, in 
the pines with the rain-drops pendent to their 
spears, in the corn-fields that look so very bright 
and yellow, in the mysteries that the clouds wove 
about the hills, in the cheerless gray light, and 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 149 

in the quiet, melancholy spirit that settled on the 
country with the storm. This cheerfully aquatic 
person would have become enthusiastic over the 
brilliantly red mesa bluffs, which, as a stray sun- 
beam stole out of the clouds, caught the light and 
reflected it like a mirror. He would have been 
as content, perchance, with the mist and its play 
as with a sunny day of warmth and flowers. But 
nature has not been so kind with us, and rain 
and cold are unmitigated abominations which steal 
away the charm of the prettiest scenery. Speak 
of the gray light and the mystic haze to more ro- 
mantic people, and let us have the shelter of a 
sound tent and three pairs of double blankets. 

The country which the stage-coach traverses 
is settled with numerous ranches, and^ is one of 
the most fertile parts of the Territory. The houses 
are mostly built of logs, which are far better than 
adobe. I fancy there is a vigor and honesty about 
them that adapt them for the ideal home of a 
pioneer. The adobes always seem groveling and 
effete to me ; but the rough little cabins built of 
sinews of pine are monuments of enterprise, hardi- 
hood, and determination. 

We made camp at seven o'clock in the even- 
ing. The rain was still falling, and the air was 
bitterly cold. Every dish on our little supper 
table was flooded, and ail through the night the 
storm beat against our tents, and the waters roared 
in an adjacent arroya. 



150 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

The arroyas, by the way, are one of the many 
peculiar features of Colorado, Arizona, and New 
Mexico. They are sandy channels, from five to 
a hundred feet deep, running through the land, 
with vertical sides. They are usually quite dry, 
but in a rain-storm they are filled with wild, foam- 
ing streams that sweep down without any pre- 
monition in an immense volume. I have seen one 
of them without a drop of water in it at the be- 
ginning of a storm, and before many minutes have 
elapsed there has been a terrific roar, and a flood 
has rushed down with a straight wall five or six 
feet deep. Frequently accidents occur to inex- 
perienced travelers who camp in their treacher- 
ous shelter, and many lives and much valuable 
property have been lost in their precipitous 
floods. 

A telegraph line connecting Santa Fe and 
Pueblo spans the road, but it is so often out of 
order that it is almost useless. It was built by 
the Western Union Company, and proved so un- 
profitable that they transferred it to the Govern- 
ment, in consideration of the privilege of sending 
all their messages free. Its maintenance costs 
about $12,000 a month, and it is in working order 
on about three days out of the seven. A reward 
is offered for the capture of any person found 
damaging the line, but the line is damaged every 
week, and the offender is never brought to justice. 
When a teamster breaks the tongue of his wagon, 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 151 

or can not conveniently find wood for his fire, he 
tears down a telegraph pole. The shaft of a stage- 
coach was broken, and the unfortunate " singing 
wire " came to grief again. The day we left 
Santa Fe the line was in order for the first time 
in a week. The following morning we met a re- 
pairer hurrying along the road, who greeted us in 
the polite manner common to Americans in the 
Territory — " Say ! have you fellows seen the line 
down anywheres?" We had not, and he con- 
tinued on his way after telling us that " the 

thing was broke again." The operator at San- 
ta Fe leads a splendidly idle life, and, tilted in an 
easy chair, absorbs himself in an all-day-long con- 
templation of his boots, while the little Morse 
instrument on the desk is as silent as its immortal 
inventor. 

On the third day out from Santa Fe we reached 
Koslowsky's ranch, which is near Rio Pecos and 
within a mile of the ruins of a church at least three 
hundred years old. This weather-beaten old sanc- 
tuary is a conspicuous object in the surrounding 
landscape, bounded by high hills and stratified 
mesas ; and at sunset, when its broken walls of red 
adobe are touched by the glow, it looks very pretty 
and romantic. It is cruciform in shape, and is about 
one hundred feet long. The roof has gone, but 
the other parts, especially the woodwork, which 
is finely carved, are in an excellent state of preser- 
vation. The walls are six feet thick in many 



152 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

places, and yet it is surprising, considering their 
friable substance, that the storms of three centu- 
ries, with hail and rain, have not succeeded in 
dissolving them. There is a tradition that the 
church was once the scene of a great massacre ; 
that some Mexican adventurers, who desired to 
penetrate the interior of the Territory, were op- 
posed by the Indians ; that the savages were in- 
vited to a conference in the church ; that, attend- 
ing, they were all assaulted and slaughtered by 
the Mexicans, and that the chancel was flooded 
by their blood. The legend is very simple and 
straightforward, and sounds veracious, though I 
would not dare to vouch that it is not of the stuff 
that is woven out of fireside gossip and grand- 
fathers' stories. 

From Koslowsky's we struck across the coun- 
try to Galisteo, and here the writer ignominiously 
broke down under a severe attack of chills and 
fever. I was unable to travel farther : I was 
delirious and exhausted, and was left at the ranch 
of an American, with the understanding that the 
party would return for me in three weeks, during 
which, time they were to be occupied in the 
Placer Mountains. The reader probably has no 
idea what it is to be ill in a southwestern Mexican 
town — how utterly the patient despairs, and how 
homesick he becomes. Galisteo was then about 
three hundred and fifty miles from the railway (it 
is nearer now), and, judged by Sydney Smith's 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 153 

standard, it was sixty times that far from a lemon. 
It consists of a small collection of mud houses and 
a population of about five hundred. The only 
American resident was my host, a native of Mas- 
sachusetts, who emigrated to the Territory twenty- 
one years ago and married a Mexican woman. 
He tried to be kind, but his rough attentions 
could not alleviate the desolation of the dark and 
dreary days of my sickness. There was a baby in 
the family who was petulantly and perpetually 
vocal from sunrise to sunset. A very small ne- 
gress, with a most extraordinary head of erectile 
hair, was dedicated to this sweet infant, and 
paraded him with a singular guttural noise which 
either gave him great solace or abashed him by 
showing him the feebleness of his gwn puerile 
efforts. At all events, as long as the guttural 
noise was continued he was comparatively quiet, 
but the moment it ceased he renewed his bellow- 
ings. In the evening, when the baby was taken 
out of hearing, the dogs began an exasperating 
concert, which was continued till daybreak. There 
were about thirteen attached to the house — large 
mastiffs, with mouths that could comfortably ac- 
commodate a man's thigh, and small curs with 
preternaturally long bodies and short legs. I 
had an affection for dogs once ; now I longed to 
tickle their appetites with arsenic. 

On the third day of my stay I became so much 
worse that I decided to go into Santa Fe for medi- 



154 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

cines by a wagon that was to return the following 
afternoon. The following afternoon was wet and 
cold, the driver was drunk, and we did not start 
on the homeward journey until about five o'clock. 
It was then raining hard, and it soon became so 
dark that it was impossible to keep the road. We 
went plunging across the country in a wild, hap- 
hazard fashion, rolling down arroyas and striking 
trees, until about nine at night, when we saw the 
welcome fire of a Mexican hay-camp, reaching 
which we pulled up for the night. My teeth were 
playing a death-like tattoo, and my overcoat and 
inner garments were wet through. The rain con- 
tinued to fall heavily, and the fire was soon 
quenched. Oh, most unhappy night ! The wagon 
was uncovered and afforded no shelter. Only two 
things were possible : I could either keep my 
blood in circulation by walking about, or I could 
lie on the sloppy ground and try to sleep. I kept 
a lonely patrol until about midnight, and then 
sank down from sheer exhaustion. Daylight 
never brought more joy with it than it did when 
I saw the blackness turning to gray in the east, 
and a rift in the gray revealing a crimson blush 
in the overcast sky. Our driver harnessed the 
horses again, and we jolted off along the deeply 
rutted road toward Galisteo, where we arrived 
about noon. My illness continued for several 
weeks ; but by slow degrees strength came back 
to me, after an experience of misery that excites 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 155 

the greatest self - commiseration when I think 
of it. 

Leaving Galisteo after my recovery, in a south- 
easterly direction, our party crossed a country 
furrowed by gigantic mesas, flanked by sheer 
bluffs a thousand feet high. From the sum- 
mit of these table-lands the eye explores in every 
direction, and follows for scores of miles the un- 
broken ridges that look like clouds drawn across 
the clear blue sky. They are not comparable 
with anything in the Eastern or Middle States, 
and give New Mexico a peculiarly strange and 
never-to-be-forgotten aspect. The bluffs are 
mostly of yellow sandstone, lying in rough strata 
or transverse tablets about the thickness of the 
flags used in a city sidewalk. The yellow is 
sometimes streaked with white, and it has a gold- 
en shimmer in the sunlight, which toward even- 
ing inflames it with crimson. The loose rocks 
are studded with dwarf spruce or pine, set far 
apart. Occasionally they remind one of a piece 
of yellow old Dresden china by their creamy 
color, with the dots of dull green ; but they are 
so entirely unique that no compact simile is ade- 
quate to give an idea of them. Toward 'sunset, 
when you look through their long channels on 
to the silent waves of the plains that engirth 
them, and see the night drifting in from the 
East like the smoke of a distant city, and the 
broad flashes of light falling on the short yellow 



156 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

grass, their lower walls are steeped in a deep 
blue, while their upper strata blaze with red and 
orange colors as the warm rays of the sun touch 
them. But usually it is only under such brilliant 
effects of atmosphere and light that the mesas 
have a pleasant appearance to the common eye. 
At other times their arid, verdureless abutments, 
and harsh unsymmetrical outlines, tend to pro- 
duce a sense of waste and rudeness, and opposite 
feelings to those inspired by the more familiar 
phases of nature. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 

Primitive Agriculture — How the Writer " Fixed " the Con- 
ductor — Three Texan Stockmen on a Carouse — The Beau- 
ties of Fisher's Peak — The Expedition seen through the 
Smoke of a Cigar. 

The branches of the Atchison, Topeka, and 
Santa Fe, and of the Kansas Pacific Railway, are 
reaching out toward Santa Fe, and will soon pene- 
trate that ancient city ; but in 1875 the terminus 
of both roads was at Las Animas, a distance of 
three hundred miles, and passenger communica- 
tion was maintained by a line of coaches, the fare 
by which was sixty dollars, or twenty cents a 
mile ; this including only fifty pounds of baggage. 
Express matter was charged for at the rate of 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 157 

about twenty-two cents a pound, and as that rate 
was to some extent prohibitory, the common 
freight was transported from the railroad to the 
interior by ox-teams that consumed weeks on the 
way. No one need be told what the conse- 
quences of this inadequacy are. There is scarce- 
ly a piece of mechanism of any kind in the Terri- 
tory, for' the reason that unless a duplicate of 
every rivet and rod is kept on hand, a break-down 
renders the machine useless for the months that 
must elapse while duplicates are being obtained 
from the States. A Buckeye mower is as great a 
curiosity to the average native as a chapter of 
Arabic would be ; and threshing machines are 
substituted by a process that would have reflected 
little credit on the economy or ingenuity of ten 
centuries ago. The threshing is done on a floor 
of adobe in a circular stockade of unhewn logs 
inserted vertically in the ground. The wheat is 
heaped in the center of this, and the cattle are 
then driven in to trample the grain from the chaff. 
Sometimes, from either indolence or carelessness, 
the stockade is dispensed with, and I have seen 
five adult persons fully occupied in reducing a 
small stack of wheat by driving a flock of sheep 
around its edges. 

When our work took us over the road, the 
sight of the lumbering old stage rolling along at 
a dead-alive pace, with four unhappy passengers 
cooped up inside, invariably filled me with dread; 



158 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

for I remembered that I too would have to sub- 
mit to the torture. But my anticipations were 
far exceeded in misery by the realization. The 
members of the expedition were engaged for 
three weeks in the country south of Las Vegas ; 
and here I left them to return East, making 
the journey to the railway at Las Animas by 
the Santa Fe coach, which passed through the 
town at five o'clock in the morning. Thirty min- 
utes before that hour, on a cold, dark morning, I 
stood under the portico of Chapman's ranch and 
hotel, quite uncertain as to whether I should be 
able to get a seat or not. Sometimes, I was told, 
the coach came in empty, sometimes it was full. 
In the latter case, I could either wait until the 
following day, or ride in the " boot." If it was 
full again the next day, I still would have to 
wait, and there seemed to be a sickening possi- 
bility that I might become old and gray in wait- 
ing at Las Vegas. But abuses of the Southern 
Overland Mail and Express Company had filled 
the traveling community with such a degree of 
terror that their vehicles were not usually over- 
crowded with passengers, and their principal 
emolument accrued from a postal subsidy, which, 
although reduced from over one hundred thou- 
sand dollars per annum to thirty thousand, still 
yielded a handsome profit. At all events, the 
coach arrived from Santa F6 empty, and I pre- 
pared to follow the directions given me for mak- 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 159 

ing myself as comfortable as possible. In the 
first place, I was told to bribe the conductor with 
sundry drinks to take the seats from the inside 
to the outside, so as to leave me plenty of room ; 
secondly, to bribe *the driver with more drinks 
not to " peach " on the conductor ; and third- 
ly, to bribe one of the station-masters to strew 
an extra quantity of hay — for my ease in re- 
clining — on the bottom of the coach. With all 
the trepidation of a guilty conscience I did this 
disgraceful work of corruption, and watched the 
whisky gurgling down the three bronzed throats 
with irresistible admiration for the constitutions 
that could endure it. I was in such a nervous 
hurry to " fix things " that I forgot to speak of 
the favors I wanted until I had paid the bar- 
keeper, when the conductor, wiping his mouth 
with the back of his hand, stuttered, " Just full." 
Had the remark referred to his bibulous capa- 
city, it would have been very appropriate ; but 
after gulping some ice-water, which, was in the 
same proportion to the spirits as Falstaff's penny- 
worth of bread to the gallons of sack scored to 
him, he continued, " Four of you will just balance 
her." I found that three burly Texan stockmen, 
red-eyed, sallow, and sleepy-looking after last 
night's debauch, were to be my fellow -pas- 
sengers in the miserable journey of fifty-three 
hours before me ; and with many misgivings I en- 
tered the coach and squeezed myself into a seat. 



160 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

The reader probably has no idea of how jovial 
a ruffian a Texan stockman is — how infinite his 
profanity, how broad his sense of humor. His 
coat-tail of sensibilities is always in the way of 
discussion, and the foot tha^ treads on it has the 
disastrous effect of a hammer striking a can of ni- 
tro-glycerine. 

Two of my companions were stupid and sleepy 
when we started, but the constant jolt of the 
coach kept them half awake and swearing. The 
third occupied himself in dressing an ugly pistol- 
wound in the abdomen, which he proudly exhib- 
ited to me as the memorial of a recent combat near 
the border of old Mexico. As the sun rose, how- 
ever, two bottles were produced from under the 
seat, and then — well, I sincerely hope that I may 
be spared a repetition of the same experience. 
In two hours the bottles were tossed out of the 
window after having been passed from hand to 
hand until they were drained to a drop ; and in 
inverse ratio to the depression of the contents, 
the spirits of the men increased in buoyancy, 
until their exuberance was terrible to behold. 
The conductor looked in and grinned, while I 
crouched into a corner, apprehensively watching 
the elephantine play which threatened to crush 
me every moment. I protested and entreated in 
vain. 

"Bill, this yar fellow objects," hiccoughed 
one of the men to his mates. 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 161 

" All right," readily responded Bill ; " chuck 
him out of the winder ! " 

The big-booted ruffians hugged, bit, and rolled 
over each other in wild glee ; and as we jolted 
over the hillocks thqy bounced to the roof and 
came down like lumps of lead. In the course of 
a few hours they partly subsided, however, and 
dropped down into the bottom of the coach. 
Even their stomachs were not proof against the 
combined effects of Las Vegas whisky and the 
oscillation of the coach. Their faces whitened to 
a deathly hue, and the smiles waned into the idi- 
otic vacancy of drunkenness. One of them strug- 
gled up to the window and put his headout — for 
what purpose I can only guess ; and when we sat 
down again he hiccoughed ; " Never in a cosh in 
in all my life that wasn't sea-shick," afterward re- 
lapsing into his former state of silent imbecility. 
The others lay huddled together in the most ago- 
nizing of positions, with their heads bent on their 
chests and their limbs doubled under them, all 
unconscious of suffering, in a befuddled sleep. 
The day went on drearily as we rolled through 
some of the least interesting country I had yet 
seen — everlasting reaches of plain, a dull yel- 
low in color, like a corn-field after harvest, and 
frequently upraised into the curious hills called 
" hogbacks," which are approached by an easy ac- 
clivity on one side, and on the other side present 
a sheer rocky front. At stations from six to ten 
11 



102 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

miles apart we obtained relays of horses, although 
our speed never exceeded four miles an hour, and 
it occasionally dwindled down to two. The road 
was atrociously bad, and the coach seemed to leap 
into the air, so severe was the jolting. 

For the greater part of the first day's ride my 
companions were insensible, but toward evening 
they revived and climbed out through the win- 
dows on to the roof, so that I spent one quiet 
hour alone in comparative comfort. The coach 
was about the size of a couple, with two benches, 
six inches wide and three and a half feet long, 
stretched athwart. It was covered with canvas, 
and was without glass windows, the substitutes 
for them being blinds fastened with a buckle and 
strap. The bottom was strewn with dirt and hay 
— principally dirt — and the seats were covered 
with leather. These accommodations were in- 
tended for four passengers, and by dint of much 
squeezing that number could seat themselves ; 
but the prospect of confinement in this narrow 
space for more than two days and two nights was 
beyond endurance. Sleep was impossible, and 
when we were packed up for the night, and I was 
wedged in between the besotted stockmen, with 
my arms and legs bound to one position — when 
the cold wind swept in through the many crev- 
ices, and my head ached and eyes were heavy — I 
prayed that Heaven would not forget Barlow, 
Sanderson & Co. Many are the sins you will an- 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 163 

swer for, unkindest and most extortionate of Je- 
hus ! Many the headaches, many the sleepless 
hours, great the hunger you have caused your un- 
offending and liberal patrons ! On the first day 
we had breakfast at 9 o'clock, consisting of buffalo 
meat, eggs, and bread. The next meal was at 8 in 
the evening, consisting of fried pork, bread, and cof- 
fee. At 5 in the morning on the second day, a ne- 
gro appeared at the coach-door with the inquiry : 
" Say, you fell's ! want any breakfast heah ? " 
A heavy boot was thrust into his face, and ac- 
companied with a jocular request that he should 

go to . I scarce closed my eyes during the 

long night. How the coach held together in the 
concussions it was subjected to was a puzzle which 
I pondered over until I dozed, and a more violent 
shock than ever restored me to wakefulness. 

On the morning of the second day we crossed 
the Rocky Mountains by the Raton Pass, with its 
romantic scenery, and came in sight of Fisher's 
Peak, a truncated cone, glowing with the warm 
colors of autumn foliage. It resembles an enor- 
mous tumulus rather than a natural formation, 
and its successive terraces are ribbed with deeply 
colored rock. Its northern front extends to the 
southeast in a long line of cliffs, so even on the 
edge that they suggest a wall artificially built for 
the protection of the thriving little town, with its 
straggling streets and rude wooden buildings, that 
lies to the north. We had left the adobes of 



164 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

New Mexico behind, and in Trinidad, Colorado, 
we saw the activity and promise of a well-to-do 
frontier settlement. Even in the Mexican towns 
where Americans are settled, the dead weight of 
the people's heritage of oppression, ignorance, 
and vice obstructs enterprise and is felt in a per- 
vading atmosphere of decay. The best friends 
of the Territory acknowledge that its progress 
will be retarded until the Mexicans are superseded 
by immigrants of a more energetic and moral 
character. 

At Trinidad the roads to Pueblo and Las Ani- 
mas met, and the passengers to the latter place 
were transferred to another and yet smaller coach. 
The stockmen contemplated "lying over," but 
they eventually decided to continue the journey, 
and another passenger was added to our number — 
a small, fussy, talkative Methodist preacher. He 
rode with the driver during the afternoon, when 
the beautiful Spanish Peaks and the glorious old 
Pike's were in views — the latter looming up more 
than a hundred miles, as prominently as when I 
first saw it from the Union Pacific Railway five 
months before — but in the evening v he came in- 
side and wedged himself into a corner. The 
Texans had lost their spirits, or they would prob- 
ably have thrown him out of the window ; but in- 
stead of that they determined to smoke him out 
on to the box again. They filled the foulest of 
pipes with the vilest of tobacco, and puffed thick 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOUKNEY. 165 

clouds into his face. They swore the roundest of 
oaths and sang the vilest of songs. The poor old 
gentleman coughed a mild protest, and complained 
that some of the songs, which would have shocked 
the audience of a Water Street dance-house, were 
"a little coarse." He was as determined to be 
amiable and conciliatory as his tormentors were 
determined to be mischievous ; but they would 
not desist, and when the coach stopped at mid- 
night for supper, the only meal we had in thirteen 
hours, he resumed his seat on the box and retained 
it throughout the bitterly cold night. We were 
detained an hour while supper was being cooked 
in the log-house before which we had jpulled up, 
and were supplied with eggs and beefsteak at the 
usual price of a dollar a head. Another sleepless 
night went by, and at ten o'clock on the next 
morning we arrived at Las Animas. I took great 
pains to find out on which road the stockmen in- 
tended to travel ; and succeeding, I resisted their 
kind invitations to travel with them, and bought 
a ticket by the other line. 

Forty-eight hours later I sat down in the 
Palmer House to a pint of Chateau La Rose and 
a tenderloin a la Russe ; and afterward, as a soft 
Cabana lent its flavor to the retrospect, my ex- 
periences in the saddle, the tedious marches, and 
the frugal mess, seemed so pleasant that I resolved 
to repeat them the following year. 

THE END. 



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SANTA F& 145 

fill other spaces of the board. "Are you all 
down — all done ? " The dice-box is rattled, and 
the little ivory bits are rolled out. The old 
Mexican trembles, and his sunken eyes glisten as 
if a fortune depended on the result, whereas it is 
only bread. No ace is turned up on the dice, and 
he loses ; so does the boy ; but the soldiers win 
and " go in " again. The other tables are occupied 
by Spanish monte and faro, and each attracts 
crowds of spectators and customers. There is 
another gambling-house, on a more extensive 
scale, a little farther up the street, and a dance- 
house a little way below. The Mexican baile is a 
very well-conducted affair, and the senoritas who 
attend them give no hint of their actual levity in 
their behavior. The music and movements of the 
waltzes are sometimes very novel and pretty, but 
the baile is, after all, but a common dance, lead- 
ing to immoral purposes. 

I can not begin to catalogue all the vices of 
Santa Fe, for it is probably the fastest little city 
in the world. In such a city — with a population 
gathered from all quarters — where most of the 
sojourners are big-coated, broad-shouldered min- 
ers, stock-raisers, and soldiers, fresh from con- 
finement in solitary ranches or long marches over 
the Plains, and seeking an outlet for a six-months' 
accumulation of pent-up deviltry — it would be 
strange if there were not a good deal of wicked- 
ness on the surface. But besides these rough-and- 
10 



146 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

tumble elements there is a small — very small — 
coterie of prosperous merchants and professional 
men of responsibility ; and even these do not 
incur any discredit by frequenting the common 
dance-house or sitting down in a public place 
and staking their money on the faro table. It 
is here the most serious objection to Santa Fe 
comes in. Some recklessness and dissipation is 
inevitable in all growing Western towns, but 
the moral sentiment of a place is at a very low 
ebb indeed when the husbands of decent wo- 
men and the fathers of innocent children "are 
conscious of no disgrace in exposing their love 
for such degraded amusements. A room in the 
principal hotel is devoted to gambling, and no 
secrecy is made of the fact. The prominent mer- 
chant with a spare hour on his hands wastes it 
here, while the clerk dispels his midday languor 
by throwing away his dimes on the democratic 
chuck-a-luck table a few doors away. " Nothing 
is thought of it." You are told this again and 
again ; and whenever a breach of propriety is 
noticed in society, this is the invariable response. 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 147 
CHAPTER XII. 

A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 

The Dangers of the Arroyas — An Unusual Telegraph Line — A 
Church Three Centuries Old — The Sanguinary Feuds of 
the Mexicans and Indians — An Attack of Mountain Fe- 
ver — Sixty Miles for Medicine. 

On the morning we left Santa Fe the weather 
was clear and warm, and the sky was a beautiful 
sapphire, with masses of immaculate white float- 
ing gently athwart it. A golden haze Jay on the 
mountains. The people were dressed in cool 
linens and duck, and straw hats. The silver 
thread in the thermometer stretched itself into 
the eighties. It was an indolent, dreamy, ener- 
vating bit of summer that had fallen into the au- 
tumn. We left the town by the stage road to 
Pueblo, passed the old adobe church that is 
crumbling to ruin under the weight of two hun- 
dred and fifty years, and soon went out among 
the interminable cacti and pines again. By and 
by a breeze sprang up, the fleece was blown away, 
and leaden clouds mantled the sky in its place. 
We had started out in trousers and shirts. 
Heavy Ulsters and cavalry overcoats did not 
avail against the midwinter cold that now crept 
down upon us from the mountains and chilled the 



148 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

stoutest of us to the marrow. The clouds thick- 
ened and lowered, and the lightning broke in 
forks and spirals against somber peaks. Then the 
rain came down in a flood and drenched us to the 
skin ; having succeeded in which, it changed to 
a spiteful hail, and beat against us until our 
faces and hands tingled with pain. Now, you 
may think that such a sudden change of weather 
is phenomenal, as it would be elsewhere ; but in 
the neighborhood of Santa Fe it is quite common, 
and the inhabitants are so used to it that, it is 
facetiously said, they never venture out in a light 
suit without carrying an Esquimaux overcoat over 
their arm and a seal-skin cap in their pockets. 

I went along the road with a little stream of 
water mournfully trickling from the brim of my 
hat down on my nose, and my clothes clinging to 
me like a worn-out mustard-plaster, envying with 
all my heart the author of "A Princess of Thule," 
and " The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," the 
only man known to me who is gifted with the 
happy power of thoroughly enjoying a rain-storm, 
and the singular equanimity of disposition that 
enables him to discover beauties out of a wet 
jacket. No doubt he would have seen all the ele- 
ments of the picturesque in the sloppy road, in 
the pines with the rain-drops pendent to their 
spears, in the corn-fields that look so very bright 
and yellow, in the mysteries that the clouds wove 
about the hills, in the cheerless gray light, and 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 149 

in the quiet, melancholy spirit that settled on the 
country with the storm. This cheerfully aquatic 
person would have become enthusiastic over the 
brilliantly red mesa bluffs, which, as a stray sun- 
beam stole out of the clouds, caught the light and 
reflected it like a mirror. He would have been 
as content, perchance, with the mist and its play 
as with a sunny day of warmth and flowers. But 
nature has not been so kind with us, and rain 
and cold are unmitigated abominations which steal 
away the charm of the prettiest scenery. Speak 
of the gray light and the mystic haze to more ro- 
mantic people, and let us have the shelter of a 
sound tent and three pairs of double blankets. 

The country which the stage-coach traverses 
is settled with numerous ranches, and is one of 
the most fertile parts of the Territory. The houses 
are mostly built of logs, which are far better than 
adobe. I fancy there is a vigor and honesty about 
them that adapt them for the ideal home of a 
pioneer. The adobes always seem groveling and 
effete to me ; but the rough little cabins built of 
sinews of pine are monuments of enterprise, hardi- 
hood, and determination. 

We made camp at seven o'clock in the even- 
ing. The rain was still failing, and the air was 
bitterly cold. Every dish on our little supper 
table was flooded, and all through the night the 
storm beat against our tents, and the waters roared 
in an adjacent arroya. 



f 
150 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

The arroyas, by the way, are one of the many 
peculiar features of Colorado, Arizona, and New 
Mexico. They are sandy channels, from five to 
a hundred feet deep, running through the land, 
with vertical sides. They are usually quite dry, 
but in a rain-storm they are filled with wild, foam- 
ing streams that sweep down without any pre- 
monition in an immense volume. I have seen one 
of them without a drop of water in it at the be- 
ginning of a storm, and before many minutes have 
elapsed there has been a terrific roar, and a flood 
has rushed down with a straight wall five or six 
feet deep. Frequently accidents occur to inex- 
perienced travelers who camp in their treacher- 
ous shelter, and many lives and much valuable 
property have been lost in their precipitous 
floods. 

A telegraph line connecting Santa Fe" and 
Pueblo spans the road, but it is so often out of 
order that it is almost useless. It was built by 
the Western Union Company, and proved so un- 
profitable that they transferred it to the Govern- 
ment, in consideration of the privilege of sending 
all their messages free. Its maintenance costs 
about $12,000 a month, and it is in working order 
on about three days out of the seven. A reward 
is offered for the capture of any person found 
damaging the line, but the line is damaged every 
week, and the offender is never brought to justice. 
When a teamster breaks the tongue of his wagon, 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 151 

or can not conveniently find wood for his fire, lie 
tears down a telegraph pole. The shaft of a stage- 
coach was broken, and the unfortunate " singing 
wire " came to grief again. The day we left 
Santa Fe the line was in order for the first time 
in a week. The following morning we met a re- 
pairer hurrying along the road, who greeted us in 
the polite manner common to Americans in the 
Territory — " Say ! have you fellows seen the line 
down anywheres?" We had not, and he con- 
tinued on his way after telling us that " the 

thing was broke again." The operator at San- 
ta Fe leads a splendidly idle life, and, tilted in an 
easy chair, absorbs himself in an all-day-long con- 
templation of his boots, while the little Morse 
instrument on the desk is as silent as its immortal 
inventor. 

On the third day out from Santa Fe we reached 
Koslowsky's ranch, which is near Rio Pecos and 
within a mile of the ruins of a church at least three 
hundred years old. This weather-beaten old sanc- 
tuary is a conspicuous object in the surrounding 
landscape, bounded by high hills and stratified 
mesas ; and at sunset, when its broken walls of red 
adobe are touched by the glow, it looks very pretty 
and romantic. It is cruciform in shape, and is about 
one hundred feet long. The roof has gone, but 
the other parts, especially the woodwork, which 
is finely carved, are in an excellent state of preser- 
vation. The walls are six feet thick in many 



152 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

places, and yet it is surprising, considering their 
friable substance, that the storms of three centu- 
ries, with hail and rain, have not succeeded in 
dissolving them. There is a tradition that the 
church was once the scene of a great massacre ; 
that some Mexican adventurers, who desired to 
penetrate the interior of the Territory, were op- 
posed by the Indians ; that the savages were in- 
vited to a conference in the church ; that, attend- 
ing, they were all assaulted and slaughtered by 
the Mexicans, and that the chancel was flooded 
by their blood. The legend is very simple and 
straightforward, and sounds veracious, though I 
would not dare to vouch that it is not of the stuff 
that is woven out of fireside gossip and grand- 
fathers' stories. 

From Koslowsky's we struck across the coun- 
try to Galisteo, and here the writer ignominiously 
broke down under a severe attack of chills and 
fever. I was unable to travel farther : I was 
delirious and exhausted, and was left at the ranch 
of an American, with the understanding that the 
party would return for me in three weeks, during 
which time they were to be occupied in the 
Placer Mountains. The reader probably has no 
idea what it is to be ill in a southwestern Mexican 
town — how utterly the patient despairs, and how 
homesick he becomes. Galisteo was then about 
three hundred and fifty miles from the railway (it 
is nearer now), and, judged by Sydney Smith's 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 153 

standard, it was sixty times that far from a lemon. 
It consists of a small collection of mud houses and 
a population of about five hundred. The only- 
American resident was my host, a native of Mas- 
sachusetts, who emigrated to the Territory twenty- 
one years ago and married a Mexican woman. 
He tried to be kind, but his rough attentions 
could not alleviate the desolation of the dark and 
dreary days of my sickness. There was a baby in 
the family who was petulantly and perpetually 
vocal from sunrise to sunset. A very small ne- 
gress, with a most extraordinary head of erectile 
hair, was dedicated to this sweet infant, and 
paraded him with a singular guttural noise which 
either gave him great solace or abashed him by 
showing him the feebleness of his own puerile 
efforts. At all events, as long as the guttural 
noise was continued he was comparatively quiet, 
but the moment it ceased he renewed his bellow- 
ings. In the evening, when the baby was taken 
out of hearing, the dogs began an exasperating 
concert, which was continued till daybreak. There 
were about thirteen attached to the house — large 
mastiffs, with mouths that could comfortably ac- 
commodate a man's thigh, and small curs with 
preternaturally long bodies and short legs. I 
had an affection for dogs once ; now I longed to 
tickle their appetites with arsenic. 

On the third day of my stay I became so much 
worse that I decided to go into Santa Fe for medi- 



154 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

cines by a wagon that was to return the following 
afternoon. The following afternoon was wet and 
cold, the driver was drunk, and we did not start 
on the homeward journey until about five o'clock. 
It was then raining hard, and it soon became so 
dark that it was impossible to keep the road. We 
went plunging across the country in a wild, hap- 
hazard fashion, rolling down arroyas and striking 
trees, until about nine at night, when we saw the 
welcome fire of a Mexican hay-camp, reaching 
which we pulled up for the night. My teeth were 
playing a death-like tattoo, and my overcoat and 
inner garments were wet through. The rain con- 
tinued to fall heavily, and the fire .was soon 
quenched. Oh, most unhappy night ! The wagon 
was uncovered and afforded no shelter. Only two 
things were possible : I could either keep my 
blood in circulation by walking about, or I could 
lie on the sloppy ground and try to sleep. I kept 
a lonely patrol until about midnight, and then 
sank down from sheer exhaustion. Daylight 
never brought more joy with it than it did when 
I saw the blackness turning to gray in the east, 
and a rift in the gray revealing a crimson blush 
in the overcast sky. Our driver harnessed the 
horses again, and we jolted off along the deeply 
rutted road toward Galisteo, where we arrived 
about noon. My illness continued for several 
weeks ; but by slow degrees strength came back 
to me, after an experience of misery that excites 



A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT INVALIDED. 155 

the greatest self -commiseration when I think 
of it. 

Leaving Galisteo after my recovery, in a south- 
easterly direction, our party crossed a country 
furrowed by gigantic mesas, flanked by sheer 
bluffs a thousand feet high. From the sum- 
mit of these table-lands the eye explores in every 
direction, and follows for scores of miles the un- 
broken ridges that look like clouds drawn across 
the clear blue sky. They are not comparable 
with anything in the Eastern or Middle States, 
and give New Mexico a peculiarly strange and 
never-to-be-forgotten aspect. The bluffs are 
mostly of yellow sandstone, lying in rough strata 
or transverse tablets about the thickness of the 
flags used in a city sidewalk. The yellow is 
sometimes streaked with white, and it has a gold- 
en shimmer in the sunlight, which toward even- 
ing inflames it with crimson. The loose rocks 
are studded with dwarf spruce or pine, set far 
apart. Occasionally they remind one of a piece 
of yellow old Dresden china by their creamy 
color, with the dots of dull green ; but they are 
so entirely unique that no compact simile is ade- 
quate to give an idea of them. Toward sunset, 
when you look through their long channels on 
to the silent waves of the plains that engirth 
them, and see the night drifting in from the 
East like the smoke of a distant city, and the 
broad flashes of light falling on the short yellow 



156 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

grass, their lower walls are steeped in a deep 
blue, while their upper strata blaze with red and 
orange colors as the warm rays of the sun touch 
thern. But usually it is only under such brilliant 
effects of atmosphere and light that the mesas 
have a pleasant appearance to the common eye. 
At other times their arid, verdureless abutments, 
and harsh unsymmetrical outlines, tend to pro- 
duce a sense of waste and rudeness, and opposite 
feelings to those inspired by the more familiar 
phases of nature. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 

Primitive Agriculture — How the Writer " Fixed " the Con- 
ductor — Three Texan Stockmen on a Carouse — The Beau- 
ties of Fisher's Peak — The Expedition seen through the 
Smoke of a Cigar. 

The branches of the Atchison, Topeka, and 
Santa Fe, and of the Kansas Pacific Railway, are 
reaching out toward Santa Fe, and will soon pene- 
trate that ancient city ; but in 1875 the terminus 
of both roads was at Las Animas, a distance of 
three hundred miles, and passenger communica- 
tion was maintained by a line of coaches, the fare 
by which was sixty dollars, or twenty cents a 
mile ; this including only fifty pounds of baggage. 
Express matter was charged for at the rate of 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 157 

about twenty-two cents a pound, and as that rate 
was to some extent prohibitory, the common 
freight was transported from the railroad to the 
interior by ox-teams that consumed weeks on the 
way. No one need be told what the conse- 
quences of this inadequacy are. There is scarce- 
ly a piece of mechanism of any kind in the Terri- 
tory, for the reason that unless a duplicate of 
every rivet and rod is kept on hand, a break-down 
renders the machine useless for the months that 
must elapse while duplicates are being obtained 
from the States. A Buckeye mower is as great a 
curiosity to the average native as a chapter of* 
Arabic would be ; and threshing machines are 
substituted by a process that would have reflected 
little credit on the economy or ingenuity of ten 
centuries ago. The threshing is done on a floor 
of adobe in a circular stockade of unhewn logs 
inserted vertically in the ground. The wheat is 
heaped in the center of this, and the cattle are 
then driven in to trample the grain from the chaff. 
Sometimes, from either indolence or carelessness, 
the stockade is dispensed with, and I have seen 
five adult persons fully occupied in reducing a 
small stack of wheat by driving a flock of sheep 
around its edges. 

When our work took us over the road, the 
sight of the lumbering old stage rolling along at 
a dead-alive pace, with four unhappy passengers 
cooped up inside, invariably filled me with dread; 



158 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

for I remembered that I too would have to sub- 
mit to the torture. But my anticipations were 
far exceeded in misery by the realization. The 
members of the expedition were engaged for 
three weeks in the country south of Las Vegas ; 
and here I left them to return East, making 
the journey to the railway at Las Animas by 
the Santa Fe coach, which passed through the 
town at five o'clock in the morning. Thirty min- 
utes before that hour, on a cold, dark morning, I 
stood under the portico of Chapman's ranch and 
hotel, quite uncertain as to whether I should be 
able to get a seat or not. Sometimes, I was told, 
the coach came in empty, sometimes it was full. 
In the latter case, I could either wait until the 
following day, or ride in the " boot." If it was 
full again the next day, I still would have to 
wait, and there seemed to be a sickening possi- 
bility that I might become old and gray in wait- 
ing at Las Vegas. But abuses of the Southern 
Overland Mail and Express Company had filled 
the traveling community with such a degree of 
terror that their vehicles were not usually over- 
crowded with passengers, and their principal 
emolument accrued from a postal subsidy, which, 
although reduced from over one hundred thou- 
sand dollars per annum to thirty thousand, still 
yielded a handsome profit. At all events, the 
coach arrived from Santa ¥6 empty, and I pre- 
pared to follow the directions given me for mak- 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 159 

ing myself as comfortable as possible. In the 
first place, I was told to bribe the conductor with 
sundry drinks to take the seats from the inside 
to the outside, so as to leave me plenty of room ; 
secondly, to bribe the driver with more drinks 
not to " peach " on the conductor ; and third- 
ly, to bribe one of the station-masters to strew 
an extra quantity of hay — for my ease in re- 
clining — on the bottom of the coach. With all 
the trepidation of a guilty conscience I did this 
disgraceful work of corruption, and watched the 
whisky gurgling down the three bronzed throats 
with irresistible admiration for the constitutions* 
that could endure it. I was in such a nervous 
hurry to " fix things " that I forgot to 'speak of 
the favors I wanted until I had paid the bar- 
keeper, when the conductor, wiping his mouth 
with the back of his hand, stuttered, "Just full." 
Had the remark referred to his bibulous capa- 
city, it would have been very appropriate ; but 
after gulping some ice-water, which was in the 
same proportion to the spirits as Falstaff's penny- 
worth of bread to the gallons of sack scored to 
him, he continued, " Four of you will just balance 
her." I found that three burly Texan stockmen, 
red-eyed, sallow, and sleepy-looking after last 
night's debauch, were to be my fellow -pas- 
sengers in the miserable journey of fifty-three 
hours before me ; and with many misgivings I en- 
tered the coach and squeezed myself into a seat. 



1G0 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

The reader probably has no idea of how jovial 
a ruffian a Texan stockman is — how infinite his 
profanity, how broad his sense of humor. His 
coat-tail of sensibilities is always in the way of 
discussion, and the foot that treads on it has the 
disastrous effect of a hammer striking a can of ni- 
tro-glycerine. 

Two of my companions were stupid and sleepy 
when we started, but the constant jolt of the 
coach kept them half awake and swearing. The 
third occupied himself in dressing an ugly pistol- 
wound in the abdomen, which he proudly exhib- 
ited to me as the memorial of a recent combat near 
the border of old Mexico. As the sun rose, how- 
ever, two bottles were produced from under the 
seat, and then — well, I sincerely hope that I may 
be spared a repetition of the same experience. 
In two hours the bottles were tossed out of the 
window after having been passed from hand to 
hand until they were drained to a drop ; and in 
inverse ratio to the depression of the contents, 
the spirits of the men increased in buoyancy, 
until their exuberance was terrible to behold. 
The conductor looked in and grinned, while I 
crouched into a corner, apprehensively watching 
the elephantine play which threatened to crush 
me every moment. I protested and entreated in 
vain. 

"Bill, this yar fellow objects," hiccoughed 
one of the men to his mates. 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 161 

" All right," readily responded Bill ; " chuck 
him out of the winder ! " 

The big-booted ruffians hugged, bit, and rolled 
over each other in wild glee ; and as we jolted 
over the hillocks they bounced to the roof and 
came down like lumps of lead. In the course of 
a few hours they partly subsided, however, and 
dropped down into the bottom of the coach. 
Even their stomachs were not proof against the 
combined effects of Las Vegas whisky and the 
oscillation of the coach. Their faces whitened to 
a deathly hue, and the smiles waned into the idi- 
otic vacancy of drunkenness. One of them strug- 
gled up to the window and put his hea^d out — for 
what purpose I can only guess ; and when we sat 
down again he hiccoughed : " Never in a cosh in 
in all my life that wasn't sea-shick," afterward re- 
lapsing into his former state of silent imbecility. 
The others lay huddled together in the most ago- 
nizing of positions, with their heads bent on their 
chests and their limbs doubled under them, all 
unconscious of suffering, in a befuddled sleep. 
The day went on drearily as we rolled through 
some of the least interesting country I had yet 
seen — everlasting reaches of plain, a dull yel- 
low in color, like a corn-field after harvest, and 
frequently upraised into the curious hills called 
" hogbacks," which are approached by an easy ac- 
clivity on one side, and on the other side present 
a sheer rocky front. At stations from six to ten 
11 



10;i A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

miles apart we obtained relays of horses, although 
our speed never exceeded four miles an hour, and 
it occasionally dwindled down to two. The road 
was atrociously bad, and the coach seemed to leap 
into the air, so severe was the jolting. 

For the greater part of the first day's ride my 
companions were insensible, but toward evening 
they revived and climbed out through the win- 
dows on to the roof, so that I spent one quiet 
hour alone in comparative comfort. The coach 
was about the size of a coiipee, with two benches, 
six inches wide and three and a half feet long, 
stretched athwart. It was covered with canvas, 
and was without glass windows, the substitutes 
for them being blinds fastened with a buckle and 
strap. The bottom was strewn with dirt and hay 
— principally dirt — and the seats were covered 
with leather. These accommodations were in- 
tended for four passengers, and by dint of much 
squeezing that number could seat themselves ; 
but the prospect of confinement in this narrow 
space for more than two days and two nights was 
beyond endurance. Sleep was impossible, and 
when we were packed up for the night, and I was 
wedged in between the besotted stockmen, with 
my arms and legs bound to one position — when 
the cold wind swept in through the many crev- 
ices, and my head ached and eyes were heavy — I 
prayed that Heaven would not forget Barlow, 
Sanderson & Co. Many are the sins you will an- 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 163 

swer for, unkindest and most extortionate of Je- 
hus ! Many the headaches, many the sleepless 
hours, great the hunger you have caused your un- 
offending and liberal patrons ! On the first day 
we had breakfast at 9 o'clock, consisting of buffalo 
meat, eggs, and bread. The next meal was at 8 in 
the evening, consisting of fried pork, bread, and cof- 
fee. At 5 in the morning on the second day, a ne- 
gro appeared at the coach-door with the inquiry : 
" Say, you f elPs ! want any breakfast heah ? " 
A heavy boot was thrust into his face, and ac- 
companied with a jocular request that he should 

go to . I scarce closed my eyes during the 

long night. How the coach held together in the 
concussions it was subjected to was a puzzle which 
I pondered over until I dozed, and a more violent 
shock than ever restored me to wakefulness. 

On the morning of the second day we crossed 
the Rocky Mountains by the Raton Pass, with its 
romantic scenery, and came in sight of Fisher's 
Peak, a truncated cone, glowing with the warm 
colors of autumn foliage. It resembles an enor- 
mous tumulus rather than a natural formation, 
and its successive terraces are ribbed with deeply 
colored rock. Its northern front extends to the 
southeast in a long line of cliffs, so even on the 
edge that they suggest a wall artificially built for 
the protection of the thriving little town, with its 
straggling streets and rude wooden buildings, that 
lies to the north. We had left the adobes of 



164 A-SADDLE IN THE WILD WEST. 

New Mexico behind, and in Trinidad, Colorado, 
we saw the activity and promise of a well-to-do 
frontier settlement. Even in the Mexican towns 
where Americans are settled, the dead weight of 
the people's heritage of oppression, ignorance, 
and vice obstructs enterprise and is felt in a per- 
vading atmosphere of decay. The best friends 
of the Territory acknowledge that its progress 
will be retarded until the Mexicans are superseded 
by immigrants of a more energetic and moral 
character. 

At Trinidad the roads to Pueblo and Las Ani- 
mas met, and the passengers to the latter place 
were transferred to another and yet smaller coach. 
The stockmen contemplated "lying over," but 
they eventually decided to continue the journey, 
and another passenger was added to our number — 
a small, fussy, talkative Methodist preacher. He 
rode with the driver during the afternoon, when 
the beautiful Spanish Peaks and the glorious old 
Pike's were in views — the latter looming up more 
than a hundred miles, as prominently as when I 
first saw it from the Union Pacific Railway five 
months before — but in the evening he came in- 
side and wedged himself into a corner. The 
Texans had lost their spirits, or they would prob- 
ably have thrown him out of the window ; but in- 
stead of that they determined to smoke him out 
on to the box again. They filled the foulest of 
pipes with the vilest of tobacco, and puffed thick 



AN EVENTFUL STAGE-COACH JOURNEY. 165 

clouds into his face. They swore the roundest of 
oaths and sang the vilest of songs. The poor old 
gentleman coughed a mild protest, and complained 
that some of the songs, which would have shocked 
the audience of a Water Street dance-house, were 
"a little coarse." He was as determined to be 
amiable and conciliatory as his tormentors were 
determined to be mischievous ; but they would 
not desist, and when the coach stopped at mid- 
night for supper, the only meal we had in thirteen 
hours, he resumed his seat on the box and retained 
it throughout the bitterly cold night. We were 
detained an hour while supper was being cooked 
in the log-house before which we had pulled up, 
and were supplied with eggs and beefsteak at the 
usual price of a dollar a head. Another sleepless 
night went by, and at ten o'clock on the next 
morning we arrived at Las Animas. I took great 
pains to find out on which road the stockmen in- 
tended to travel ; and succeeding, I resisted their 
kind invitations to travel with them, and bought 
a ticket by the other line. 

Forty-eight hours later I sat down in the 
Palmer House to a pint of Chateau La Rose and 
a tenderloin a la Russe ; and afterward, as a soft 
Cabana lent its flavor to the retrospect, my ex- 
periences in the saddle, the tedious marches, and 
the frugal mess, seemed so pleasant that I resolved 
to repeat them the following year. 

THE END. 



vA 






ONE SHILLING 



A-SADDLE 



IN THE 



' I L D W E s r 



A CLIJimSE OF TRAVEL 




WILLIAM L IDEIS 



LO-NDON 



J. C. NIMMO & BAIN 
4, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAxN r D 



1 



RECENTLY PUBLISHED. 

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A Rogue Elephant — Tiger Shooting in the Dehra Doon 
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Shores of the Gunga — Expedition to the Source of the 
Ganges — Cashmere — A Run for Life— The Two Chargers 
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